The solution comes in response to increasing demand from military customers and governments for wider bandwidth in the air – especially for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), battlefield surveillance, border patrol, fishery, forestry detection, and protection missions.
“L-MAX will change the art of the possible for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance applications," said Todd McDonell, president, Inmarsat Global Government.
Our government users shared their need for a data throughput of no less than 1 megabits per second, particularly on the return link from airborne platforms. It is our pleasure to launch an ideal solution for this requirement with L-MAX, alongside such an expert integrator as Eclipse Global Connectivity.”
Partnering with Eclipse Global Connectivity, the Inmarsat global government team were able to launch the first commercial operation of this service with a major NATO nation.
L-MAX enables government users to connect via Inmarsat ELERA (the IoT and narrowband satellite network) L-band through both Inmarsat's I-4 and Alphasat satellites.
Previously ISR aircraft operations would require customers to choose between the size, weight, power and price (SWAP) features of Inmarsat SwiftBroadband and the throughput capabilities of the larger terminals of Inmarsat Global Xpress.
Now with modifications to current SwiftBroadband installations, government agencies can now benefit from both capabilities using the Inmarsat L-MAX service.
"Our commitment to working closely with Inmarsat has led us to be the first company to facilitate L-MAX delivery. This collaboration is a foundation for helping our Europe, Middle East and African defence, and other customers get the maximum possible performance from their airborne connectivity systems," added Marc Pinault, CEO of Eclipse Global Connectivity.
"Equipping our customers’ aircraft with the avionics, antennas and software required to facilitate this enhanced network capability, allows them to take advantage of Inmarsat's ELERA L-band capacity through the integration and configuration of both airborne and ground network components.
L-MAX reserves bandwidth and power over a geographic region for a specified duration and uses higher-order modulation and coding to deliver IP data, delivering a high data-rate, cost-effective, end-to-end communication solution over an Inmarsat private network using the SWAP features of ELERA terminals.
