Broadcasters and sat ops team up to fight jamming

Broadcasters, satellite operators and equipment manufacturers have begun discussing the development of countermeasures to tackle to the problem of satellite jamming.

Satellite operator Eutelsat reported 340 cases of deliberate satellite jamming in the first 10 months of 2012, three times the number of incidents recorded in 2009. About 90% of jamming signals were traced to Syria and Iran.
Industry participants met at Eutelsat’s Paris HQ at the end of last week to discuss possible countermeasures.

Among the measures discussed were sharing of data about disruptions that could be stored in a common database. Sources of jamming can be traced by two satellites working together via so-called geolocalisation.
Other possible measures include electronic redirection of satellite receiving antennas so that the source of interference is placed in a so-called dead point in the antenna’s receiving pattern.