By Rachel Jewett
Publication Date: 2026-03-30 20:20:00
WAVE Consortium members conducted live demonstrations during SATShow Week. Photo: Leandra Bernstein for Via Satellite
Members of the Waveform Architecture for Virtualized Ecosystems (WAVE) Consortium, an IEEE standards body, achieved the first instance of standardized waveform virtualization using field-programmable gate array (FPGA) acceleration in the cloud during SATShow last week.
WAVE members AWS, Gilat, and SES accomplished multiple firsts during a SATShow demonstration, said WAVE Executive Director Juan Deaton. “The biggest one is being able to connect a virtualized cloud platform to an SES gateway, which is something that has not been done before using digital IF.”
The demonstration also marked a milestone for AWS, which used generative AI to provide real-time human-language analysis of RF signals. Finally, the group debuted WAVE’s new specification 1.0, scheduled for public release.
WAVE members took a 10 Mbps video stream from a local laptop and routed it through a Gilat Aquarius Pro modem running the DVBS-2X waveform. Using a satellite emulator, the stream was connected to a digitizer installed at the SES gateway in Hagerstown, Maryland. The digitizer converted the RF signal into a standardized digital IF (DIFI) stream, which was then piped into the AWS cloud over a dedicated 1 Gbps Direct Connect terrestrial link. Once in the cloud, a Gilat virtual modem ran two separate FPGA instances, one to receive and demodulate the stream back into video and…
