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Backed by a legacy of engineering excellence, reliability, and industry-leading customer service, Telesat is one of the largest and most successful global satellite operators. Telesat works collaboratively with its customers to deliver critical connectivity solutions that tackle the world\u2019s most complex communications challenges, providing powerful advantages that improve their operations and drive profitable growth.<\/p>\n
Continuously innovating to meet the connectivity demands of the future, Telesat Lightspeed, the company\u2019s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite network, will be the first and only LEO network optimized to meet the rigorous requirements of telecom, government, maritime, and aeronautical customers. Operating under its global priority Ka-band spectrum rights, Telesat Lightspeed will redefine global satellite connectivity with ubiquitous, affordable, high-capacity links with fibre-like speeds.<\/p>\n
From a state-of-the-art global, geostationary satellite fleet, to their Low Earth Orbit network, Telesat has a long history of building some of the most advanced communication systems in the world.<\/p>\n
When the Telesat team embarked on a major new project to deliver its next-generation LEO satellite network, they knew it was time to look holistically at the portfolio of software and tools available to their engineering staff to ensure that they had what they needed to be successful.<\/p>\n
Enabling connectivity across the planet is no easy undertaking. And the team views it as a lighthouse investment into the future of Telesat as a business.<\/p>\n
With robust and experienced systems engineering practices already in place, it was crucial to the team that they use a deliberate and considered approach to selecting the right requirements management solution.<\/p>\n
Their key objectives were to find a formal requirements management solution that:<\/p>\n
At the beginning of the project, the team was able to use a documents-based approach to requirements gathering. However, as the conceptual phase of the LEO project ended and technical documentation started, the team knew they needed to pivot to a formal requirements management solution.<\/p>\n
The importance of finding the right requirements management solution was not lost on the team, either. While their requirements management solution needed to have robust capabilities and flexibility, it also needed to be easy to implement and easy to use.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew we needed to find a solution that gave us enough flexibility to manage requirements oriented at both software and hardware, but also not so complex that it required a full-time system admin to manage the platform,\u201d said Laughton.<\/p>\n
As a mature satellite operator with proven performance in spacecraft development and system operations, it\u2019s not surprising that the Telesat team had a very stringent evaluation process for implementing new technologies. When Telesat embarks on selecting new engineering tools, they perform what\u2019s called a weighted trade study. A simplified version of this trade study can be seen below.<\/p>\n
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