A first step in the U.S. Navy's four-year quest to replace its aging satellite radio gear occurred on May 31 when Raytheon learned that it had been awarded an estimated $1.1 billion Navy multiband terminal (NMT) contract.

Raytheon program manager Glen Bassett said the award is a victory for his firm's open-architecture approach to designing the software for NMT, which is expected to replace communications systems — some 20 years old — designed by Harris and Raytheon.

According to Captain John Pope, a program manager in the navy's program executive office for C4I, the Navy has been fielding satellite systems for its ships for more than 10 years and every time they added a new band, and/or a new capability, it meant adding another antenna to the ship. However, with a single NMT on board a ship, three legacy systems will be replaced by a single set of common hardware.

According to Pope, the NMT program will more than double the data transmission rate to ships. Some 300 vessels are expected to receive NMT gear.

Raytheon's approach is built according to a software communication architecture (SCA), which is a list of rules that tells designers how elements of hardware and software are to operate in harmony. Originally developed for the Defense Department's Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) program, the SCA is being adopted worldwide as a standard for software-defined radios.

Raytheon said tests have verified that NMT can automatically establish Internet protocol connections using the Navy's time-division multiple-access interface processor, thereby increasing bandwidth efficiency and greatly simplifying the way a sailor will establish communications. The firm said NMT would provide service personnel worldwide with connections through existing Defense Department satellites — as well as the upcoming Wideband Global SATCOM, scheduled to enter service this year.