Satcom conferencing capabilities of the black conference controller

The Defense Communications Engineering Center is currently developing the black conference controller (BCC) to exploit the conferencing capabilities of the jam-resistant secure communications system. The authors provide an overview of the BCC capabilities, hardware design, and theory of operation. The BCC provides conferencing capabilities for both voice and data operation. The BCC can support up to four simultaneous satellite conferences. The BCC design centers around using personal computers as the computing platform. Two modes of operation exist with the BCC, the conference setup and management mode and the user operation mode. The conference setup and management mode addresses how the BCC operators will set up and manage the system, whereas the user operation mode describes how the end user will operate the data and voice devices