Earlier this year, working together with their partners AST Mobile, Vodafone completed the world’s first 5G direct-to-device video call, between the operator’s CEO at the company’s headquarters in Newbury and an engineer deep in the Welsh countryside. While still a proof-of-concept, the successful demonstration showed the huge potential which 5G satellite has to augment existing terrestrial networks, bringing coverage and capacity to areas where economic considerations or planning constraints mean that ground-based options are simply not viable.
The move echoed another similar breakthrough that Vodafone was also involved with 32 years ago in 1992, when a Vodafone engineer sent the first ever text message to a colleague that simply read, “Merry Christmas.” While separated by more than three decades, the two breakthroughs may well have similar ramifications with one ushering in the messaging era and the more recent heralding a new 5G Space Age.
Where are we today?
Commercial direct-to-device cellular satellite communications are still very much in their infancy, with live emergency services and limited messaging on high-end iPhone and Android devices, as well as a growing number of NB-IoT networks being deployed around the world. At the same time the highest profile consumer satellite services are predominantly delivering fixed broadband, using proprietary technology from the likes of Starlink.
In order for 5G NTN to make the leap into the mainstream that SMS did all those years ago, there are a number of building blocks that need to be in place, both in terms of performance and architecture. AccelerComm has been hard at work with our partners to develop technology that delivers on this market’s promise. Most recently we’ve been working on breakthrough technologies for 5G Satellite. We have already completed a project with our partner Lockheed Martin and are eagerly awaiting the upcoming launch of the first 5G base station in space using a Regenerative architecture.
The architecture of the future
Behind the headlines and ‘firsts’ there has been a fair bit of industry debate about the two different architecture options of Regenerative vs Transparent (for a detailed overview check-out the Mobile World Live Webinar we conducted with Lockheed Martin).
Under the Transparent model, the base station being in the gateway on the ground, with the satellite acting as a relay means that two over-the-air “hops” are required for every communication between base and user equipment (UE). In contrast, for the Regenerative model since all base station data processing is performed on the satellite, only one “hop” is required. With Transparent, the main benefit lies in having lower demands on satellite payload processing, meaning lower power and cheaper satellites. The important caveat being this cost differential for the payload is around 10%.
By placing increased processing capability on the satellite and implementing the base in orbit, the Regenerative model has a number of clear benefits. These include native support for inter-satellite links (ISLs), which significantly enhances coverage as it allows the satellites to still maintain communications when they are out of direct contact with ground stations. This approach can also perform signal regeneration, error correction and data processing onboard the satellite. And because the number of hops is halved, latency is reduced and the signal quality improved.
All of this leads to better performance and reliability in communication, particularly important for developing high-speed 5G applications. Additionally, more compute power means that Regenerative architectures can allow for more complex operations such as network slicing directly in space, offering greater network flexibility and scalability.
What’s Next?
In the run up to MWC 2025 we made a major product announcement, building on our pioneering work in regenerative architectures, to supercharge the performance of 5G satellites – helping them to deliver with the scale and throughput necessary for mobile operators to deliver widespread high-quality services from NTN. We were able to demonstrate this solution to potential customers and partners on our stands at both MWC and Satellite 2025.
The many NTN announcements from major players around the time of both of these events coupled with the huge interest we had in our demonstration shows us that activity towards full commercial 5G NTN networks is accelerating rapidly.
This latest release of our 5G NR NTN physical layer solution is designed to deliver the kinds of capacities those constellations will need, up to 6Gbps and supporting 128 beams and 4,096 users per chipset for LEO satellites. The solution represents a 30x increase in performance compared to the previous generation, with a roadmap to increase this by more than 400x, moving 5G satellite performance beyond the proof-of-concept stage to delivering services at scale. It is not just capacity and throughput that is required to power commercial deployments, the solution also includes our patented signal processing techniques that bring improved RF performance and is able to run on the latest generation of space hardened silicon to ensure reliable operation over the life of the satellite.
Conclusion
The mobile industry is embracing 5G NTN as a critical component of its network offerings, delivering huge amounts of additional coverage that complements existing terrestrial networks, with high profile demonstrations and proof of concepts. Through our pioneering work AccelerComm is now primed to deliver a commercial solution, which will help bring Satellite-based 5G into the global mainstream.
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