Sematron helps Royal Navy watch the World Cup

Astrium, Europe's leading satellite specialist, enlisted the expertise of Sematron when they won a contract to provide a television link onto the UK's fleet of Royal Navy Ships. The project goal was to boost naval crew's morale whilst at sea for long periods through the provision of television services including the World Cup.

The television link was required to run over the Royal Navy's existing satellite link with limited bandwidth available and severe restriction on space for on-board equipment. With these problems in mind Astrium called upon Sematron, and outlined the project requirements. Astrium made clear that their proposal required the implementation of a system using routers and serial modems, however, the prototype configuration involved a substantial number of boxes and hence a lot of very precious space, which was just not available.

Sematron's innovative approach was to customise two of their range of 'off-the-shelf' products, thus reducing the size of the units used. At the top of the ship, two boxes were already in place and were a total of 4U high. The fibre optic driver unit was integrated into the down converter, reducing the units to a total of one unit high, whilst also reducing the number of devices in the lower communications room from five units down to just one. This produced a total saving of 50% and considerably cut the cost of implementation.

Utilising our existing IP modems, manufactured by our Partner, Comtech EFData, along with fibre optic driver from Foxcom, Sematron consulted on the feasibility of their designs and this level of integration. Sematron carried out the customisation by integrating the Foxcom fibre drivers into the Comtech EFData modems and converters, using an internal board in the modem rather than an additional box. As well as the design and integration, Sematron undertook the build, testing, and support of the customised boxes on board the ships.

Roger Palmer, Consultant at Astrium, remarked, "By working together Astrium and Sematron have produced the optimum solution in the available space to the benefit of our customer the Royal Navy. Sematron's support throughout has been critical".

Sematron's bespoke end-to-end solution and implementation support has been such a great success that the use of this television link is now being extended to the UK's Royal marines and the Army.