EDA is part of a new EU research project launched today by the European Commission under the HORIZON 2020 programme which aims to develop secure satellite communications for EU governments and institutions. Called ENTRUSTED (‘European Networking for satellite Telecommunication Roadmap for the governmental Users requiring Secure, inTeroperable, innovativE and standardiseD services’), the project will run until February 2023.
Under the leadership of the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency (GSA) and with a budget of €3 million, ENTRUSTED will identify needs and requirements of secure satellite communication end-users. The project will contribute to the formulation of assumptions and guidelines, in terms of user-orientated activities, for the future EU GOVSATCOM programme aimed at creating independent, autonomous and secure satellite communication system for EU Member States and agencies.
With its wide SatCom expertise based on two SatCom services delivering projects and a Project Team Satellite Communication, EDA has been called to be part of the consortium of EU Member States and EU Agencies implementing the project. The Agency will contribute to all work packages with a focus on user needs, requirements and use cases definition, surveying the state-of-the-art of existing secure SatCom user technologies and definition of a research and development (R&D) roadmap.
Over the coming 30 months, ENTRUSTED will develop a common understanding of governmental user needs for secure SATCOM systems, elaborate a set of user requirements for the future EU GOVSATCOM programme and analyse available and planned secure SATCOM capabilities and solutions offered by commercial operators and governments. It will also assess the need for European standardisation for secure SATCOM user equipment and services and identify the main research and innovation actions to be taken at national and EU levels with regard to secure SATCOM user technologies. A set of recommendations to the European Commission will be issued at the end of the project.