Iridium unveils world’s smallest satellite transceiver
Billed by the company as the world’s smallest satellite transceiver, Iridium’s model 9603 two-way data transceiver is smaller than a matchbook. The transceiver is 70% smaller by volume and half the board footprint of the company’s 9602 model. The single-board unit designed for handheld units aims to move two-way satellite data with low latency and duplex connectivity.
“We developed the Iridium 9603 transceiver to further drive costs out of products and enable smaller and tighter integration into our partners’ solutions,” said David Wigglesworth, Iridium’s vice president of data services. “This new transceiver breaks down design barriers and enables Iridium’s 275 partners to embed global connectivity in handheld personal tracking devices and even smaller vehicles, containers, devices for field-monitoring, command and control applications, and unattended sensors.”
The Iridium 9603 assumes an antenna with a gain of ~3Bi and adequate shielding. This enables the unit to be integrated into a variety of wireless data applications or retrofitted into existing Iridium shortburst data (SBD)–only applications, according to Wigglesworth.
Iridium partners Blackbird Technologies, ITT Exelis and NAL Research currently are developing products capable of using the transceiver.
“It moves satellite machine-to-machine (M2M) communications into areas traditionally considered to be the preserve of terrestrial wireless,” Wigglesworth said.
