Getting to orbit should be faster, more predictable, and less costly than it is today. Yet complex procurement cycles, endless non-recurring engineering (NRE), and mismatched components still bog down projects and inflate budgets.

There’s a better approach: fly first, build second.

High-fidelity mission simulation lets you design and test complete spacecraft configurations—bus, payload, power requirements, comms links, and more—before hardware is purchased or built. Engineers can validate subsystem performance, model orbital dynamics, and identify design gaps long before integration, eliminating costly surprises before ever purchasing the first component. This session will also examine the risks of custom-built flight software, which can create complexity and distract teams from mission objectives, versus deploying modular, proven off-the-shelf systems that work seamlessly with a wide range of hardware and mission designs.

Attendees will learn practical strategies to design faster, buy smarter, and reach orbit with confidence—accelerating timelines and freeing teams to focus on mission outcomes, not integration headaches.

Proposed 6G changes place unprecedented demands on the handset device: high-gain, multi-band RF performance, support for non-terrestrial networks (NTN), robust waveform adaptability and edge processing. Yet mainstream handheld devices, such as smartphones, are increasingly compromised in exactly these areas. Modern handsets suffer from degraded RF performance due to antenna miniaturization, dense integration, and coexistence trade-offs. The result is a widening gap between what 6G networks will require and what conventional device architectures can deliver (designing all handsets for the 1–5% of scenarios that require NTN-grade RF is technically disproportionate and architecturally inefficient).

This talk argues for a shift toward a modular, role-based device ecosystem. It examines the technical challenges of integrating NTN, 6G compliant radios, Doppler-tolerant PHYs, and intelligent scheduling into consumer-constrained platforms. Emerging alternatives, such as vehicular relays, wearable RF nodes, and disaggregated PHY runtimes, offer more viable paths to meeting 6G’s performance targets.

These changes signal a deeper architectural disruption. The tightly integrated chipset/handset pipeline is not well suited to the flexibility and diversity 6G demands. Instead, we anticipate a more fragmented device landscape, composed of interoperable roles, optimized for context and capability. Without this transition, 6G risks reinforcing the limitations of legacy assumptions, rather than delivering on its promise of true ubiquity.

5G non-terrestrial networks (5G-NTN) satellite networks will soon be able to handle all types of applications and provide service to a massive number of users. In this complex and dynamic network ecosystem, and end-to-end adaptation of 5G-NTN towards the EU-GOVSATCOM services, requirements and use cases is of capital importance to efficiently deploy European governmental satellite services.

To enable such a vision, 5G-GOVSATCOM targets the development and evaluation in a natural user environment of different key enabling technologies that aim to provide full integration of 5G-NTN in the EU-GOVSATCOM framework. In the radio technologies domain, 5G-GOVSATCOM targets the development of necessary adaptions and enhancements of radio access procedures to attend to geostationary mobile terminals in the exclusive governmental X-band. Furthermore, the integration of 5G-NTN user equipment with an antenna operationally focused on on-the-move and on-the-pause scenarios are planned.

In parallel, in the inter-networking segments, 5G-GOVSATCOM aims to provide a seamless handover between terrestrial networks and NTN via a smart gateway while enhancing core-network functionalities. Finally, all project developments are planned to be first validated in a controlled lab with satellite connectivity and, subsequently, experimentally tested in close collaboration with final users. These latter tests will constitute the first 5G-NTN trials with final users devoted to i) ubiquitous telemedicine in maritime areas and ii) crisis management connectivity bubble.

There was a time when copper ISDN lines were the reliable backup, and broadband was the last resort. LTE was once dismissed as well, for either being too expensive or for not providing adequate performance. Now, we’re seeing history repeat—this time with satellite connectivity. But the narrative is changing fast. Satellite is emerging not just as a viable alternative, but as a critical foundation for next-generation connectivity.

As players like Starlink, Amazon, and others compete in a new-era space race to expand satellite coverage, enterprise demands are also evolving. The rise of AI-driven applications is creating unprecedented needs for high-availability bandwidth—anytime, anywhere. Satellite is uniquely positioned to support these demands, reaching areas where traditional connectivity solutions fall short. Further, satellite is rapidly closing the gap in solutions for both performance and reliability. Not only does it work well for tough-to-reach places, but similar to 5G, it’s evolving into a suitable enterprise connectivity option.

This session will explore real-world use cases from organizations such as DB Schenker, Pernod Ricard, and CF Industries—companies that began with satellite as a backup solution but are now leveraging it as a primary component of their global network architecture.

Join us as we unpack the strategic role of satellite in building future-ready, AI-optimized networks. Our panel will dive into the “how” behind deploying secure, scalable satellite-first architectures that support distributed users and AI-powered operations across the globe.

From military vessels operating in remote seas to organizations providing financial services, many industries rely heavily on GPS to synchronize their timing and location data. However, the rise in GPS/GNSS threats such as jamming, spoofing, and interference, can lead to devastating impacts to infrastructure stability, operations, and asset safety.

This presentation will share how GPS/GNSS interruption isn’t limited to the military and will explain the potential consequences of vulnerabilities on commercial organizations as well. It will stress the importance of integrating a robust secondary assured positioning, navigation, and timing (APNT) strategy to ensure operational security and business continuity. It will also explain what steps need to be taken to enhance resilience for the future.

The presentation aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the principles, benefits, challenges, and future potential of Free-Space Optical Communications (FSO) technology in enhancing the accuracy, security, and reliability of Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) systems. Participants will gain valuable insights into the technology’s current applications and future trends, supported by case scenarios and innovative solutions.

In theory, the integration of FSO could revolutionize the accuracy, reliability and security of PNT systems. Government and private partnerships are starting to study and research this concept and believe that FSO technology can enhance accuracy of PNT without the additional cost required for building up the ground infrastructure needed to support the tens of thousands of satellites that are set to be launched in the coming years. In addition, the use of FSO would be more affordable and more reliable because ranging and synchronization of the laser system will be used from satellite to satellite. This workshop will introduce participants to the fundamental principles of FSO and its advantages over the current terrestrial infrastructure.

Objectives:

• To explore the critical role of PNT systems in various sectors and the limitations of current technologies.
• Limitations of current PNT technologies: signal vulnerabilities and coverage gaps. • To demonstrate how FSO can complement and enhance PNT systems.
• To present real-world use cases of FSO in PNT systems. This workshop focuses on innovative technologies and their applications in navigation systems.

This session focuses on the operational deployment of compact AI/ML models into a cognitive system to support RF awareness in tactical and space environments. Eric Mason will provide an overview of the cognitive system that drives HawkEye 360’s (HE360) mission-critical analytics, ensuring EMSO effectiveness in a congested RF environment. The focus will be on training, deployment, and monitoring of edge ML/AI processing in a low SWaP system with limited ground connectivity. He will discuss the impact of the mission in a changing electromagnetic environment and how limitations on hardware impact both system design choices.

Potential Key Talking Points:

• Cognitive RF systems to optimize Tasking, Collection, Processing, Exploitation, Dissemination (TCPED) processes
• Designing ML models for RF characterization with limited processing and memory for edge applications
• Managing dynamic signal environments via continual model tuning
• Role of lightweight inference pipelines in tactical RF missions (e.g., maritime domain awareness, border monitoring)
• How space-based RF data combined with AI accelerates decision timelines in EMSO missions

This presentation focuses on the technical development and implementation of SatcomLLM, a European Space Agency-funded project building a domain-specific open-source large language model (LLM) for the satellite communications sector. The talk will focus on how we engineered, fine-tuned, and deployed a specialized LLM designed to assist in operational, regulatory, and engineering tasks relevant to the satellite industry.

The core of the presentation will center on the design of the SatCom Expert Virtual Assistant (SCEVA), a system powered by an adapted open-source LLM that supports users in areas such as link budget review, anomaly detection in telemetry, engineering design, proposal writing, and satellite mission planning. The presentation includes concrete examples of how SCEVA interacts with technical input and outputs structured, actionable content.

Attendees will leave with a practical understanding of how open-source LLMs can be safely and effectively customised for satellite communications and how to design use-case-driven training pipelines.

Typical SatCom ground system deployments rely on single vendor solutions that involve complicated and time-consuming integration work when looking to support other vendors and other satellite network operators. The mission of the Digital Intermediate Frequency Interoperability (DIFI) Consortium is to provide a simple, open, interoperable Digital IF/RF standard that replaces the natural interoperability of analog IF signals and helps prevent such vendor lock-in. In this presentation, we will examine the DIFI standard, its implementation to enable the virtualization of ground-system infrastructure, and demonstrate a multi-vendor solution for showcasing DIFI in action.

This paper will discuss the DIFI ecosystem converter test with our radio frequency (RF) and network emulation solutions. In the RF domain of the DIFI RF/IF converter (IFC), Keysight’s M9484C VXG vector signal generator will be used to generate a “golden” RF signal. On the other side of the IFC, we have the Ethernet domain. This is where Keysight’s Pathwave Vector Signal Analysis (VSA) software comes into play. Keysight’s PathWave Vector Signal Analysis software offers a comprehensive set of tools for demodulation and vector signal analysis of modern custom modulation, DVB-S2X, and 5G communication standards, and more. The VSA software can demodulate the DIFI signal coming from the IFC in the Ethernet domain, showing the “health” of the waveform that’s being transferred, the RF signal that is being transferred through the converter via DIFI/VITA49. Keysight’s Ixia BreakingPoint software runs on a traffic generator for network security test, then acts as the “golden” modem response and upstream source that provides the stateful entity on the other side of the IFC to send DIFI packets upstream to the converter. Therefore, Keysight provides two sides (downstream RF and upstream DIFI Ethernet) to the IFC.

This paper will also discuss Ethernet traffic test scenarios for integrators. These examples represent real-world, planned implementations of DIFI in satellite communications (SatCom) signal services. using real-world examples.