2010 was an eventful year for Paradise Datacom, or should I say “Teledyne Paradise Datacom”. As the name change implies, Paradise Datacom and its parent company – Intelek PLC was purchased by Teledyne Technologies in July of this year. What does this mean for Paradise and its global customer base? With more than 80 business units worldwide and sales of $1.8 billion, Teledyne has raised the bar for Paradise Datacom when it comes to commercial viability and global notoriety. The Teledyne logo is well respected in the US Defense industry in particular, an already significant and growing market focus for Paradise Datacom.

John Restivo, President of Paradise Datacom, sums it up well, “When two organizations with excellent reputations in the industry such as Teledyne and Paradise join forces, customers can expect great things as a result. Paradise Datacom is now a member of a technologically driven family of companies and we expect this type of advantage to place us on a steeper growth curve. We’ve just begun to explore the host of potential synergies we can exploit as we continue to push the technology envelope and increase our overall value proposition to our customers worldwide.”

2010 has seen major accomplishments on the technology and product feature front. Over the course of the past several years, Paradise has witnessed a major shift in the ratio of commercial to government/military business. A large portion of the Company’s R&D budget has been allocated to the development of products that are targeted for military communications applications — specifically X- and Ka-band. Tangible results from these efforts have come to fruition with our recently introduced line of Ka-band SSPAs and Block Up-Converters (BUCs) as well as the expansion of the X-band RF products into the new Gallium Nitride-based technology, which allows us to achieve greater power levels as well as increased efficiencies and the ability to operate in higher heat environments.

2010 marked the year of our first deployments of PowerMAX, Paradise Datacom’s soft-fail redundant SSPA system designed specifically to address applications needing significant levels of output power. Other SSPA milestone achievements were the release of the Compact Jr. SSPA that is based upon the legacy Compact Outdoor line of amplifiers but only half the size and weight and our line of microBUCs for incorporation into lightweight flyaway terminals.

The flagship satellite modem, QUANTUM, received a host of refinements and upgrades during 2010. Already one of the industry’s most powerful IP platforms, TPD modems have received a technology update in the form of a higher-power IP processing engine making this product a great choice for 3G as well as any application for which IP is the transmission protocol. As is true for the entire TPD modem family, internal features negate the need for operators to purchase external boxes such as:

• RF Spectrum Monitor – with peak hold, interfering carrier detection and use while carrying traffic
• Bit Error Rate Tester – interfaces directly with Fireberd, operates via overhead channel and use while carrying traffic
• Constellation Monitor – provides indication of link health, particularly beneficial when using high-order modulation schemes
• IP Performance Monitor – displays packet throughput activity, successful transfer, dropped packets and so on

FastLink, TPD’s version of low-latency LDPC was incorporated and released this year. FastLink allows users to optimize for latency or BER performance, depending on their unique link requirements. When used in conjunction with other link enhancing features such as Paired Carrier, satellite transponder usage can be maximized resulting in reduced operating expenditures or increased utilization. Thanks to the Company’s teaming agreement with ViaSat, TPD has incorporated their patented Paired Carrier Multiple Access (PCMA) technology into the line of satellite modems, offering customers the possibility to achieve up to 50 percent savings on transponder costs by allowing transmit and receive carriers to be superimposed upon one another. The recent release of a GPS interface makes Paired Carrier applicable for maritime applications as well.


As 2010 comes to a close, the Teledyne Paradise Datacom team is hard at work preparing a host of new products for launch in early 2011. Stay tuned for new releases in the RF and modem product families in the coming weeks that will certainly generate a positive stir in the market.