Testing the Iridium Burst service & improving reliability with GDB Boost

Iridium Burst is the first one-to-many global data broadcast service, making it possible to transmit data to millions of enabled devices at a time. The low-latency service can transmit data globally via the Iridium network with transmissions that can even be received indoors.

Global Data Burst (GDB) was the first company to actively test the Iridium Burst service. During these tests, we found that penetration of the Iridium Burst signals into buildings, strongly depends on the elevation of the satellite. At very low elevation angles, it is likely that the signal must travel a longer distance through the building’s construction materials and therefore suffer additional loss compared to signals from satellites that are overhead. This can lead to situations where critical lifesaving messages will not be received.

To overcome this issue and enhance the system’s overall performance, GDB have developed GDB Boost, an indoor signal booster, to compliment the GDB Pager. The GDB engineering team were tasked with creating a product which; “is simple to install”, “does not use any energy” and “is user friendly”.

The awesome GDB team, of course delivered on all three major requirements and developed a solution where two passive Iridium antennas are connected through a coaxial cable.

So, how does it work?... An outdoor magnetic antenna is placed outside to receive the Burst signal and an indoor antenna re-transmits the Burst signal to the GDB Pager. Users simply place the GDB Pager on top of the indoor antenna to boost the signal. Depending on the connecting coaxial cable, the transmission can travel between the indoor and outdoor antennas by up to 20 metres!

Indoor performance tests of the Iridium Burst service, with over 10,000 GDB Pager messages sent, have shown a reliability of over 99.99%. With such a high degree of reliability, the GDB Pager combined with GDB Boost, using the Iridium Burst service, is a serious candidate for pager applications where reliability is of the utmost importance.

For more information on GDB Boost, please get in touch [email protected]