OVER THE AIR CRYPTOGRAPHIC KEYS EXCHANGE FOR SECURE GOVERNMENTAL SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS(ARTES 4.0 4S SPL 3D.006 / 4S.008)
26, April 2021

ESA Open Invitation to Tender: 1-10630
Open Date: 17/03/2021 00:00 CET
Closing Date: 28/05/2021 13:00 CEST

Objective: The objective of the activity is to develop and demonstrate a security keys exchange protocol to support confidentialityand integrity protection of the control and user planes at the data link layer. A prototype gateway and terminal will be realised toperform the validation of those protocols. Targeted Improvements: Enable or augment communication missions with high security requirements, by providing security at physical and link layers. Description: The global demand for secure governmental satellite communications is becoming an attractive and growing market opportunity, driven by stringent security requirements on the ground assets and on the communication link. Currently, those security requirements are imperfectly covered as existing commercial implementations suffer from various identified security weaknesses that need to be addressed. This activity will implement state-of-the-art security technologies to commercial satcom equipment in order to cover governmental and institutional needs including terminal and gateway authentication as well as confidentiality and integrity of the data and metadata (user and control planes).The activity will develop a key exchange protocol to support DVB-S2 data link encryption using the AES standard. This key exchange protocol shall be based on widely adopted terrestrial standards (such as, for example, TLS, IKE, PKI or relevant multicast group key management schemes) and shall support user-supplied identification devices (smartcards). The key exchange protocol will be implemented in a hardware prototype which shall enable secure communication between user and gateway terminals. A test-bed will be developed and performance over a real or emulated satellite link will be tested, including the impact on signal delay.

Directorate: Directorate Telecom Integrated Applica
Estabilishment: ESTEC
ECOS Required: No
Classified: No
Price Range: > 500 KEURO
Contracts Officer: Claudia Ria Piesche
Initiating Service: TIA-TI
IP Measure: N/A
Prog. Reference: E/0534-04A – 4S-Other Act. Prod&T
Tender Type: Open Competition
Open To Tenderers From: AT+BE+CH+CZ+DE+DK+EL+ES+FI+FR+GB+HU+IE+IT+LU+NL+NO+PL+PT+RO
Technology Keywords: 6-A-I-Telecom System Engineering Tools
Products Keywords: 2-L-4-a-Bent-pipe repeaters, regenarative transponders,…

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