Press Release: SES and ALCAN, a German Smart Antenna Company, are working together to develop a new Flat Panel Antenna for SES’s O3b mPOWER system

ALCAN has reached an important milestone in developing a new Flat Panel Antenna for O3b mPOWER Customer Edge Terminals using ALCAN’s revolutionary new technology based on Liquid Crystal (LC) enabled phased array antennas.

8 March 2018

ALCAN Systems GmbH, the smart antenna company, announced today that it has reached an important milestone in the development of a new Flat Panel antenna for the Customer Edge Terminals (CET) of O3b mPOWER, SES’s ground-breaking satellite-based communications system.

ALCAN announced in August 2017 that it raised EUR 7.5 million in Series A funding from a consortium of investors (including SES) to bring its next-generation low-cost, ultra-thin flat smart antennas to market.

ALCAN has been working with SES Networks to develop a new generation of low-power flat smart antennas to be used over the O3b MEO constellation. Significant progress has been made towards a 2D-electronically steerable flat antenna operating at Ka band.

ALCAN’s smart antenna design is based on a revolutionary new technology for liquid crystal (LC) – enabled phased array antennas, which provides state-of-the-art performance at low power and low cost.  ALCAN’s flat smart antennas are electronically steerable, and can be easily mounted on moving vehicles such as airplanes, ships, trains, trucks, buses, caravans and self-driving cars. They can also be mounted as ground fixed antennas to support the roll-out of mobile backhaul and enterprise networks. The antennas are designed to be compatible with existing geosynchronous earth orbit (GEO), medium earth orbit (MEO) and upcoming low earth orbit (LEO) satellites. The antennas will also be compatible with future 5G mmWave technology.

“We are delighted to have achieved this milestone and are looking forward to working with SES to develop a low-cost and low-power flat panel antenna for SES and its MEO constellation”, said Dr. Onur Karabey, CEO at ALCAN. “At ALCAN, we are excited to be developing our ground-breaking smart antennas and are ideally positioned to meet the demands of an increasingly mobile and connected world.”

“O3b mPOWER is designed to provide cloud-scale connectivity through a ‘virtual fibre’ network for application-aware services on a global scale,” said John-Paul Hemingway, Executive Vice President of Product, Marketing and Strategy for SES Networks. “We believe that working closely with partners like Alcan in a robust development ecosystem will enable us to introduce the latest innovation and greatest cost-efficiencies across multiple market segments at great scale.”

About ALCAN Systems

ALCAN Systems is a German-based smart antenna technology start-up which has developed the revolutionary new liquid crystal (LC) enabled phased array technology. The technology is based on the work of ALCAN co-Founder and CEO Dr. Onur Karabey who proved the viability of LC based phased array antennas in 2011. The company also received seed funding of EUR 650,000 in 2014 from the EXIST Transfer of Research Program of German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) to commercialise the research and accelerate the development of a working prototype.   ALCAN raised a further EUR 7.5 million Series A funding in 2017 from a consortium of leading global companies and is now focused on bringing its first product to market in 2018. For more information, please contact Esat Sibay, CFO at ALCAN Systems, E-mail:pr***@al**********.com     www.alcansystems.com

About SES

SES is the world-leading satellite operator and the first to deliver a differentiated and scalable GEO-MEO offering worldwide, with more than 50 satellites in Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) and 12 in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO). SES focuses on value-added, end-to-end solutions in two key business units: SES Video and SES Networks. The company provides satellite communications services to broadcasters, content and internet service providers, mobile and fixed network operators, governments and institutions. SES’s portfolio includes the ASTRA satellite system, which has the largest Direct-to-Home (DTH) television reach in Europe, O3b Networks, a global managed data communications service provider, and MX1, a leading media service provider that offers a full suite of innovative digital video and media services. SES is listed on the Euronext Paris and Luxembourg Stock Exchange (ticker: SESG). Further information available at: www.ses.com