Government Case Studies

Katrina Disaster Relief – New Portable Hybrid Cellular/Satellite System by ViaSat & QUALCOMM Aids Effort

viasat — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 15:45:04 -0800

Hurricane Katrina’s devastation was tragically comprehensive. The Category 3 storm hit the Southeast Louisiana coast on August 29, 2005, leaving an estimated US$75 billion in damages and 80 percent of the city of New Orleans flooded. And in the aftermath, when first responders arrived to begin to pick up the pieces and repair the city, there was little or no communications infrastructure working. Katrina reportedly blew away more than 1,000 cellular towers, 3 million terrestrial phone lines, and 38 emergency 911-call centers.

Holiday Weekend Turns Into A True Labor Day

On September 2, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) called on QUALCOMM^® to deployable emergency cell service in the region. QUALCOMM, in turn, called on ViaSat Inc. to work together to bring some of the first wireless communications to relief organizers.

Throughout the next two days - the Labor Day holiday weekend in the U.S. – engineers from the two California-based companies worked around the clock to put together a quickly-deployable system that could be transported to the devastated region. The QUALCOMM Deployable Base Station (QDBS^TM) portable cellular system was paired with transportable ViaSat LinkWay® Ku-band satellite terminals for backhaul into the terrestrial grid. The complete system that would head for the devastated Gulf Coast was contained in five transit cases; two for the cellular system, one for the LinkWay modem and baseband equipment, and two for the satellite antenna and RF electronics.

On September 4, successfully integrated for the first time and tested in San Diego, the system was ready to ship. QUALCOMM chairman Dr. Irwin M. Jacobs provided the use of his private jet to carry the system, along with generators, 400 CDMA phones, and technical personnel from QUALCOMM. With Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport closed, the first stop was Baton Rouge. A helicopter continued the trip from the Louisiana State Police headquarters, flying the people and equipment to an emergency operations center in St. Bernard Parish.

In the meantime, a parallel effort was under way to install a second ViaSat terminal on the roof of a QUALCOMM building in San Diego. It would serve as the other end of the satellite backhaul, tying the system into the Public Switched Network (PSTN) for voice calls and Internet access.

With one final ingredient – a Cisco router – hand-carried via helicopter to the St. Bernard Parish site on Thursday, the installation was complete and the crew was ready to hand out phones on Friday. Cellular spectrum was provided by operators including ALLTELL, Verizon Wireless, and Sprint Communications.

The initial system integration between the satellite and cellular pieces took a bit more time before the crew could get it on the air the first time. However, once the system was complete, FEMA personnel were able to use it and, when necessary, tear it down and reinstall it in a new location, with no help from QUALCOMM or ViaSat personnel. The entire system was built back up and was on the air within two hours of the move to a new Parish headquarters.

Cellular/Satellite System Overview and Description

The QDBS is a CDMA2000^® cellular system that includes a cell site, call processing hardware and a soft switch. The system can serve users in a Pico cell configuration, with a service area in a maximum radius of 1 kilometer from the base station, or a Macro cell with a 10 to 15 kilometer service radius. The temporary “dome” of communications it creates also can be shaped to cover just a desired geographic area or population.

The QDBS handles a combination of voice and data, and can provide secure voice calls up to Type 1 levels. The first system deployed for FEMA can process up to 150 simultaneous mobile calls, 46 mobile to landline calls, plus wireless data.

The satellite component is a Ku-band ViaSat IP SATCOM Flyaway Terminal. The standard flyaway is totally plug-and-play, featuring a ViaSat LinkWay^® modem, TCP-PEP for IP acceleration, router, and Ethernet switch. The antenna is a 1.2-meter auto-acquiring antenna that can be deployed and operating in less than ten minutes with one push of a button and minimal operator training.

The LinkWay system features full-mesh (hub-less) communications that reduces network delay to a minimum due to a single hop from terminal to terminal. ViaSat Dynamic Bandwidth Resource Allocation (DBRA) technology shares bandwidth among remote terminals and adjusts the size of the satellite channel to match data traffic so there is no need to acquire and pay for extra bandwidth margins to accommodate peak traffic. At the “gateway” end of the backhaul, Cisco call management hardware is added to feed incoming calls into the PSTN.

Relief workers could access the network either through, CDMA2000 commercial phones, or by using QSec^®-2700 secure phones from QUALCOMM (for mobile to mobile calls only). For Internet access and high-speed data services, the workers were issued wireless aircards to fit PDAs or laptop computers.

The Crisis Creates a Product

Since the first crisis situation, the two standalone products have now merged to form a complementary system, with several more follow-on installations for additional FEMA sites and for the U.S. Northern Command. Now the quick-deploy cellular/satellite system can be a communications lifeline in any area hit by a natural disaster or other catastrophic event.

LA County Office of Emergency Management - Satellite Communications for Reliable, Secure, Always-on Network

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 18:49:07 -0800

Land-based communications is usually one of the first casualties when disasters strike. Los Angeles County saw first hand the short comings of relying on terrestrial telecommunications during the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

"The terrestrial network was broken," said Adam Nostrant, vice president and co-founder of Network Innovations Associates. "Some had access and others didn't. There was no standard terminal either, so that created its own set of problems in managing the network."

Now NIA has installed a private satellite network for the first responder network of The Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management using a LinkStar® broadband satellite system from ViaSat. All the attributes of satellite communication make it a natural fit for emergency operations. Disasters often cut or create gaps in terrestrial service, but, by virtue of its wireless nature, wide area coverage and central point of control, satellite networks are immune to interruptions on the ground.

The Emergency Operations Center near downtown L.A. is built on a floating foundation to withstand earthquakes and other disasters.

The Emergency Satellite Communications Network (ESCN) is the new backbone for the Emergency Management Information System (EMIS) that L.A. County fire, law enforcement, health, and safety agencies rely on for communications in the event of a disaster. The new installation includes networking equipment for 137 locations, plus network services through the ViaSat Customer Care Center in Carlsbad, California.

Linking County Emergency Personnel to the Help They Need

The L.A. County Emergency Operations Center (LAEOC) is responsible for command, control, coordination and communications during crisis response and long term recovery from every major emergency. The LAEOC building, south of downtown Los Angeles, is specially constructed to withstand any number of disasters, including a magnitude 8.5 earthquake on the San Andreas fault. The San Andreas is the "master" fault of an intricate, 800 mile-long fault network that cuts through the California coastal region.

All 88 cities within Los Angeles County rely on the EMIS network to connect to critical resources from Medical, Police, Sheriff, Fire and City Hall agencies in an emergency. Designated operators communicate through the network when the Office of Emergency Management activates the system.

"The start of all this was to answer the question, 'What if we lose the EOC?' " said Rob Sawyer, who was instrumental in designing the network and now is chief of IS for the LA County Fire Department. "The plan was to use satellite only for a mobile backup, but we quickly saw the need for a totally separate network and that led to a wider satellite deployment."

Now LinkStar satellite modems, connected to EMIS terminals at every site, will be able to provide two-way communications with a dedicated hub server at the L.A. County Emergency Operations Center (LAEOC), creating a secure, emergency response intranet across the county. By the end of 2005 the agency is expected to complete a mirror site in Denver, Colorado that will serve as a backup hub for the network.

Key Attributes Make LinkStar the Choice

Three key attributes of the LinkStar Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) system that made it Sawyer's choice: speed, security, and configuration options.

Sawyer was seeking data rates comparable to DSL. While the satellite network is capable of far faster speeds, it still operates efficiently at the 1 Mbit/second download and 128 kbit/second upload speeds it is configured for now.

As a private network that bypasses the terrestrial grid entirely, security is inherent in the satellite system. The LinkStar system also supports a technology called "VLAN tagging" that securely routes packets to their intended locations creating a Virtual Private Networking within the shared bandwidth. In addition, each site has its own firewall and router.

Configuration options let network managers set priorities for different types of traffic all flowing over the network at once. From a central network management system, operators can ensure that the most critical data always has an expedited path through the network.

"As we all know, WANs are difficult to manage, but it's a much easier task with this satellite network," said Nostrant. "We always know the IP address of each site since the satellite terminal IP addresses are static, so you can do it all from one central location."

NIA has also included features that have simplified managing such a large network. Using an Altiris client and a SonicWALL Firewall Security device, operators can terminal to any PC on the network for software upgrades, configuration or other network maintenance.

"When we start sending information over the EMIS network, we'd really rather send it through the ESCN because it's more secure," said Sawyer. "Even though the primary network is still terrestrial, most likely the network operators are going to use the satellite network when they have a choice."

Small VSAT antennas are typically placed on a facility roof with a non-penetrating mount such as the one pictured here.

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