Special aircraft missions often have a need for transmitting video feeds or data in real time to the ground. We enable the reception of customer airborne line-of-sight downlinks as a service. Our ground station antennas are equipped to accurately track such missions over large distances when in range of one of our receiving stations. Received video/data can be forwarded in real-time securely via the internet to an operations centre. Our current ground stations are located in The Netherlands (near the North Sea coast) from where a large area of the North Sea, The Netherlands, Belgium, the UK, and parts of Germany and France are covered.

Typical missions that can benefit from this service are SAR (search and rescue) operations, environmental (i.e. pollution) monitoring or disaster response (flooding, fire, etc). Another example are live television events when helicopters or relay planes need to transmit live video to the ground.

Image of an example coast guard MEDEVAC mission. Used as example to show what an example coast guard video feed can look like. The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement.
Example video feed of a Coast Guard MEDEVAC mission
The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement.

Example benefits of our service:

  • On-demand / flexible / quick response: After initial on-boarding, we can in principle configure a downlink reception within minutes of a request as our stations operate 24/7.
  • Cost-effective: With our service, you can make use of live video/data downlink capability from your aircraft without having to own, operate and maintain a ground station yourself.
  • Large coverage area: We cover a very large geographical receiving area due to very good horizon visibility at our ground station locations and using high gain tracking antennas. Even if you already operate a ground station, chances are we cover regions that may not be fully covered by your existing ground station(s), providing you with extended coverage.
  • Backup/redundant downlink: We can provide a backup/redundant downlink in parallel to any possible existing ground station, ensuring you have a reliable connection at all times.
  • High throughput: The RF LOS connection can often allow for higher throughput than is available via i.e. SATCOM. For video feeds this means that i.e. higher video resolutions and frame rates can be achieved. Also the simultaneous downlink of multiple high-quality video/data streams is possible.

Whether you need short-term support for a specific mission or long-term assistance for ongoing operations, we are flexible. Contact us today to learn more about how our ground station services can support your aerial vehicle operations.