Genesis Lands Virtual Satellite

Arkansas’ slow-to-crank technology sector is on the verge of a multi-billion dollar jump start.

Internationally renowned satellite communications engineer Bob Friedman, who operates two companies at the University of Arkansas’ Genesis Technology Incubator in Fayetteville, has made a technical breakthrough with staggering potential.

His patent-pending Virtual Satellite technology is basically a new way to take advantage of old resources. It features the first method and apparatus for combining transponders on multiple existing geosyncronis (stationary) satellites to create stronger broadcast signals called “virtual channels.”

Simply put, it creates a high-power satellite signal using low-power “birds” that are already in orbit. The beauty is the Virtual Satellite, which has high-quality television and Internet applications, has as much or more revenue potential as physical satellites but requires only a fraction of the overhead.

Satellite technology expert Richard Wunderlich, president of Electronic Systems Products Inc. in Atlanta, does product development for communication giants Nortel Networks Corp., Lucent Technologies Inc., and AT&T. He and a number of other experts said the sky is literally the limit for Friedman’s invention.

“Bob’s Virtual Satellite will allow some clever people to launch a satellite service without having to launch a satellite,” Wunderlich said. “To put a bird up at this time, it takes three to four years and costs more than $300 million. The Virtual Satellite’s low cost allows you to beat any [other satellite provider’s] price on delivery.

“Basically … it’s a slam dunk.”

The Northwest Arkansas Business Journal has learned that several out-of-state venture capital firms have shown strong interest in Friedman’s concept. The local ramifications are huge, since Friedman said he hopes to locate the Virtual Satellite’s manufacturing in Fayetteville.

The technology would require mass production of several pieces of hardware, including a 30-by-18 inch rectangular antenna and small, set-top box components. Friedman, whose credentials include directing Ford Aerospace Corp., American Satellite Corp. and Telcom General Corp., said there are also local possibilities for distribution, marketing and further research spinoffs.

That’s not even counting additional ventures for potential U.S. Department of Defense applications.

Who is this guy?

Friedman, a native of Chillicothe, Ohio, is probably better known on Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley, Calif., than he his on College Avenue. That’s because the former NASA consultant wound up here by accident.

His daughter, Dawnn, married a UA student, and after Friedman had visited the area several times, he fell in love with it and decided to relocate. He and wife Sharon moved their ITI Communications Corp. to Fayetteville in 1995. ITI, a separate entity from Friedman’s Virtual Satellite Corp., is developing a Third Generation Products Partners (3GPP) base station in Korea for third generation cell phones.

Friedman’s willingness to take chances has enabled him to take three separate businesses from start-ups to communication powerhouses that were eventually bought by companies like Contel, GTE, AT&T, British Petroleum and Andrew Corp.

In 1975, he teamed with famous rocket scientist Werner Von Braun to develop lower-cost satellites for small countries. He invented Small Aperture Satellites in 1981, and Very Small Aperture Satellites in 1987. The VSATs soon became the industry’s commercial standard — whether erected on residential lots for TV use or used for point-to-multipoint transmissions by big businesses like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in Bentonville.

VSAT is now a $2 billion industry that employs more than 30,000 people.

“The Virtual Satellite will be bigger than the VSAT,” Friedman said. “Stop and think about how cell phones changed the way we used telephones. The Virtual Satellite is a bit like that in terms of how it could change satellite use.”

Friedman spent the early part of the 1990s doing product development for a number of companies including Scientific Atlanta Inc. Friedman’s work for SAI included a three-year marketing effort in the People’s Republic of China that resulted in more than $42 million worth of profitable contracts.

On Sept. 15, he is set to receive the Ohio State University Engineering Department’s prestigious Benjamin G. Lamme Medal. It’s given annually to a graduate of the college for “meritorious achievement in engineering.”

How it works

Friedman’s premise is simple. The actual technology is not.

There are hundreds of geosyncronis satellites orbiting 23,300 miles above the earth — the distance at which a satellite remains directly over the same land location. Even though Ku-band satellites, which may be located as close as two degrees apart, have been shoe-horned into inclined orbits there’s still a finite amount of space available.

Satellite positions must be approved by the World Administrative Radio Conference, and they come with a $50 million price tag.

So Friedman determined the key to increasing satellite communication volumes was to take advantage of unused transponders on existing birds. Wunderlich said there are enough idle transponders on existing satellites that can be combined to instantly “put up” two or three Virtual Satellites

“The owners of those satellites would love to have someone leasing that transponder space,” Wunderlich said. “They’re just sitting up there doing nothing.”

Transponders can carry 10 to 12 channels each, but have limited bandwidth and power. Combining the beams produces a more powerful signal that may be received without the need of a gigantic earth station antenna.

David Covington, an electrical engineering professor and owner of the Fayetteville telecommunications consulting firm, Finite Magic, said the scientific challenge was finding a way to reconfigure the split signals. He’s convinced Friedman has done that.

“Bob’s definitely found an opportunity to magically glue together several low-powered satellites so they look like one high-powered one,” Covington said. “You can buy a little of this satellite, a little of that one and stick it together to get something significant. What you had to have is a receiver with multiple listening components that could pick up, say five channels arriving at once from five different satellites.

“That means they’re maybe milliseconds off, and that’s a significant amount when trying to synchronize a broadcast signal. That’s why this is a break through.”

About 15 higher-powered satellites have been launched in recent years, since consumers decided they wanted smaller, roof-top antennas instead of 10-foot yard dishes. But Bob Winkelman, a consultant to Friedman and managing director of Alignment Strategies International in Washington, D.C., said the Virtual Satellite is a much better use of resources.

“The great worry right now is that the soaring demand for communication capacity threatens to destroy our current technology,” Winkelman said. “If you add up everything we’ve got now and convert it all to broadband, we’re still going to exhaust it.

“What Bob has done is found a very, very cost affective solution.”

Friedman would not discuss his invention’s military applications, other than to say it could be used to transmit and review information from sensors that might determine things like people moving in a jungle or a ship passing a certain buoy in the ocean. Friedman, who has so far personally invested $500,000 worth of his money and time into the project, said he just plans to move quickly as soon as the patent is received.

“I can see us getting the same kind of atmosphere at Genesis that Silicon Valley had in the 1960s when I was there,” Friedman said. “One discovery led to another, and the whole thing fed off its own momentum.”