Small drones are cheap and plentiful. Keeping their radio links alive under electronic attack is neither.
Arke Telekom raised €1M from ACT Venture Partners, a deeptech investor, to push its communications technology abroad. The Turkish company builds radio systems for unmanned aircraft operating where jamming, spoofing and satellite navigation outages are routine.
A network that rebuilds itself
Its product, ArkeLink, pairs software-defined radio with a self-forming mesh architecture. When one link is disrupted the network reroutes traffic automatically rather than dropping the connection.
Chief technology officer and co-founder Barış Karadeniz argues that holding a link in an electronic warfare environment takes more than a strong radio, and that networks need to reorganise as conditions change. The company says the system is compact enough for small airframes, where equipment designed for larger military platforms does not fit.
Arke Telekom has also been selected for NATO DIANA, the alliance’s defence accelerator, which gives access to testing facilities and partner networks. Chief executive Saygun Önay said the round is a step toward international sales, with ACT’s deeptech experience and contacts part of the draw.
Defence is the primary market. Disaster response, search and rescue and critical infrastructure monitoring are the adjacent ones.
