en.Wedoany.com Reported - European fabless semiconductor company TUSK IC has secured an industrial commercialization contract from the European Space Agency (ESA), supported by the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO), to transform its high-frequency Ka-band electronic beamforming architecture from an experimental prototype into mass-producible, market-ready hardware components.
This product phase will operate under the Industrial Competitiveness element of ESA's Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems (ARTES) program, with funding specifically allocated for the scaling, validation, and commercial infrastructure deployment of the company's proprietary ConnectKa integrated circuits and ConnecTile active antenna modules. The core objective of the contract is to address the challenge of high manufacturing costs in deploying user terminals for next-generation satellite network ground segments. Historically, high-frequency millimeter-wave components for electronically scanned antennas have relied on expensive, specialized semiconductor substrates such as gallium arsenide (GaAs) or silicon germanium (SiGe).
TUSK IC's technological differentiation lies in its use of standard, high-volume complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) silicon manufacturing lines, integrating the radio frequency front-end, phase shifters, and power amplifiers onto standard bulk silicon wafers, achieving a 30% reduction in thermal energy consumption compared to existing market alternatives. By commercializing a low-power, standardized architecture, the company aims to provide modular, stackable active antenna tiles that original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) can assemble to build flat-panel tracking systems. These modular tiles enable continuous, non-mechanical tracking for satellite communications on the move (SOTM) systems installed on commercial aircraft, maritime fleets, and military vehicles.
The acceleration of the ConnectKa platform's commercialization comes as operators massively expand high-bandwidth low Earth orbit (LEO) and medium Earth orbit (MEO) constellations, including Amazon's Project Kuiper, Telesat Lightspeed, Eutelsat OneWeb, and SES O3b mPOWER. These high-throughput networks rely entirely on the Ka-band spectrum to distribute enterprise broadband, requiring a large number of flexible, multi-orbit ground terminals. Furthermore, the expansion of European silicon-based design supports the legislative mandate for EU technological sovereignty by establishing a localized supply chain for satellite user terminal components, reducing Europe's systemic dependence on foreign semiconductor designers and state-supported manufacturing ecosystems, and building a secure, domestic hardware baseline to support future institutional communication networks such as the EU IRIS² constellation.
Dr. Kathleen Philips, CEO of TUSK IC, stated that this new phase marks a significant step for the company from innovation to commercialization. Building on the foundation laid by the Nebula project, the company is preparing its Ka-band chips and ConnecTile for mass production and deployment in commercial satellite communication user terminals. By offering the first solution manufactured using a high-volume CMOS process with record-low energy consumption, the company aims to strengthen Europe's capabilities in advanced satellite communications and contribute to building a competitive and resilient European supply chain.
