The innovation that stops enemies jamming our satellite communications

Satellites beam data from space down to Earth using radio waves. But the technology has some disadvantages: Space is running out of, well, space for all the radio frequencies; radio transmissions are vulnerable to jamming; and it’s getting harder for radio waves to handle the vast amounts of high-resolution data modern satellites generate. The war in Ukraine has highlighted the security risks, with GPS signals often jammed in the Baltic Sea, while, before the conflict, Russian forces successfully disrupted satellite communications by jamming radiofrequency signals.

"On top of that, radiofrequency antennas can have a very short lifetime in combat zones," says Hugues Gontier, head of marketing at Cailabs, based in Rennes, France. "They can get detected and destroyed.”

Because narrow-beam radio signals from satellites cover a wide area – roughly a circle with a diameter of 40-kilometres – while laser communication focuses down to a few tens of meters, it is exponentially more difficult to detect or jam lasers. Cailabs's technology uses “multi-plane light conversion” to deal with the biggest challenge facing laser communication: the atmosphere. Indeed, because light interacts with the fast-moving variations in air density, the laser beam shape is distorted on the ground, causing the beam to twinkle and killing transmission.

Jérôme Marcelino, a senior investment officer at the European Investment Bank who handled the Cailabs deal, highlights that “financing a company whose technology allows for a more secure communication between earth and satellites is increasingly crucial for Europe’s sovereignty, especially in current geopolitical context. Cailabs’s optical/laser technology offers safer, faster and higher-capacity data transmission than traditional radiofrequency systems, paving the way for the future of space communications.”

It's the kind of technological innovation that could have big implications for Europe's security and defence, as well as for how other industries such as telecommunications operate.

Some satellites already use lasers to communicate between themselves in space. But transmitting laser beams through the Earth's atmosphere has been very challenging. Humidity, fog, rain and temperature variations in the atmosphere scatter and distort laser beams beyond recognition. This is where Cailabs's technology is transformative. The company has developed sophisticated optical tools that reconstruct scattered laser signals, essentially reassembling the beam to recover the transmitted information. "When you send a laser through the atmosphere, the satellite receiver on the ground doesn't receive a clean beam – it gets a scattering of points," explains Anders Bohlin, an expert on space technologies at the European Investment Bank. "Cailabs's technology reads those patterns and reassembles the beam to extract the information. It's a worldwide first.”

The technology has civilian and military applications. In the case of climate monitoring, for example, Earth observations “generate vast amounts of data that simply cannot be transmitted efficiently using radio frequency due to capacity constraints,” Bohlin says. “This technology enables data models that can be much more precise for climate analysis."

The challenge Cailabs addresses is urgent. Thousands of satellites orbit Earth, providing weather monitoring, military surveillance, telecommunications and television broadcasts. As their numbers swell, available radiofrequencies are increasingly scarce.

"The spectrum is now fully saturated," says Marcelino, the investment officer. "Every time you launch a new constellation of satellites, you need to ask for a license to be able to communicate with it."

To maintain its leadership and increase production, including a new factory planned for 2027, Cailabs received €37 million in venture debt financing from the European Investment Bank, backed by a guarantee from InvestEU. The reason this deal is called venture debt is because it is structured like a loan, but the interest and principal are paid back at a later date to provide companies liquidity between funding rounds.

At the same time, Cailabs received an additional €20 million investment from other investors, including the European Innovation Council Fund, an early investor and shareholder in the company. The EIC is a €4 billion investment fund under the European Commission’s Horizon Europe research programme that supports game-changing technologies with venture capital investments. A dedicated EIB team acts as the EIC Fund’s advisor. Its early support to Cailabs in December 2022 played a pivotal role in helping the company scale-up and gain international visibility.

For Cailabs, the EIB partnership represents more than capital. "It's confirmation of our business model," Gontier emphasises. "It's a long-term financing that shows the world our go-to-market plan is solid. We're talking about hardware and industry – these are long-term projects, and we felt the EIB was 100% receptive to that."

As Europe seeks to secure its technological sovereignty in critical sectors, Cailabs exemplifies the innovation the continent needs – and the EIB's evolving financial tools demonstrate how public investment can accelerate breakthrough technologies from laboratory to market leadership.