Polo Marconi SATCOM Terminal Portable Tactical Satellite Station for Voice and Data Communications in Areas Without Terrestrial Coverage

The Polo Marconi SATCOM Terminal is the satellite communications station designed for the forward command post, special operations team in depth, or disaster response EOC in areas without coverage of any terrestrial communications system — no fixed SATCOM, no cellular network, no VHF/UHF radio due to terrain masking — where the only communications option with higher echelon is the low-orbit (LEO) satellite constellation or mid-orbit BGAN global coverage.

The terminal integrates two independent satellite modems in a single load chassis: the Iridium Certus 700 modem providing up to 704 kbps bidirectional IP data over the LEO Iridium constellation with global polar coverage including the geographic poles — the only constellation with coverage in Antarctica and the Arctic — and the Inmarsat BGAN modem providing 492 kbps with coverage in the ±75° latitude band including all of Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific. The PACE (Primary-Alternate-Contingency-Emergency) management system automatically selects the active channel based on availability and latency of each constellation, with switchover time under 8 seconds between Iridium and BGAN without interrupting the active data session.

The flat active aperture antenna with electronically steered satellite tracking without moving parts (ESA - Electronically Steered Array) automatically points to the highest elevation available satellite of each constellation without manual operator pointing, eliminating deployment time penalty and link loss due to platform movement when the terminal is installed in a moving vehicle. Fixed position deployment — extract terminal from case, deploy flat antenna, power on — is completed in 3 minutes without tools or satellite telecommunications knowledge.