Qualcomm Technologies Inc. is teaming with Iridium Communications Inc. to integrate the satellite communications (SATCOM) vendor’s data services into its Snapdragon Mission Tactical Radio (MTR).
The goal is to make SATCOM available for adoption and use by the U.S. government and other allied partners. Integration of the Iridium data services will allow applications ranging from handheld and mounted radios to autonomous vehicles to gain secure L-band SATCOM in environments where terrestrial networks are either unavailable or compromised.
Qualcomm said the Snapdragon MTR can integrate multiple Iridium services into a single chipset. First is the Short Burst Data (SBD), a service for low-latency messaging and telementry and Iridium Burst, a service for simultaneous broadcasts to an unlimited number of enabled devices.
Iridium’s waveform combined with Qualcomm’s commercial wireless capabilities for cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GNSS will allow global SATCOM on devices with strict size, weight, power and cost requirements, Qualcomm said.
"The Snapdragon MTR positions Iridium and QTI at the forefront of next-generation communications architectures while equipping warfighters and coalition partners with scalable solutions,” said Scott Scheimreif, executive VP of government programs at Iridium.
Additionally, Iridium and Qualcomm are working to integrate Iridium data services into the Snapdragon X75 5G modem-RF system to allow even further SATCOM capabilities to more devices.
