Widespread Satcom Integration Into 5G Seen Being at Least Year or 2 Out
The commercial availability of equipment that will allow integrated terrestrial/non-terrestrial 5G networks could be 12 to 24 months out, satellite communications and wireless experts told us. With the increasing efforts being made to integrate terrestrial and satellite networks, satcom claiming a bigger role in 5G "is just a matter of time," said Miguel Costa, SES senior product manager-mobile backhaul, on a webinar Thursday. Many satellite experts think a widespread satcom role in 5G will be years off (see 2205180003).
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The 3rd Generation Partnership Project's Release 17 earlier this spring gives system architecture definitions for satellite integration, but implementing them in real equipment remains some time off, emailed Barry Evans, University of Surrey information systems engineering professor. "The emphasis has been on backhaul as the low hanging fruit and the connection via satellite of 5G mobile cell base stations in remote and inaccessible areas," he said. Integration now "is still quite shallow," though there's work on a deeper integration for seamless orchestration and a zero-touch system that will allow dynamic network slicing, he said.
Some equipment manufacturers are on board in designing equipment in a virtualized mode, which hasn’t been the case to date, Evans said, saying the hope is commercial equipment on the market "in a year or so." He said the space segment cost remains an issue for mobile network operators, and low earth orbit (LEO) constellations offer the prospect of reduced costs, but those might not manifest themselves until the second-generation constellations in two to three years.
"We are really in a phase of perfecting 5G both terrestrially and to include satellites and this will run up to 2025," when satellite backhaul and direct-to-handset service should be in operation, Evans said. Following that will be 6G standardization, where non-terrestrial networks could be "integral." He said 6G will be "a network of networks with a layered space component" of satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles uniformly operating under the standards "rather than as we have at the moment with satellite being an add-on to a standard developed for terrestrial alone."
The standardization enabled by Release17 should allow seamless terrestrial/non-terrestrial integration with automatic handovers, but often there's an 18- to 24-month lag between standards being set and commercial availability of equipment, said Rysavy Research President Peter Rysavy in an interview. That means such an integrated service might not be in the cards until sometime in 2024, he said. Widespread device support of that capability could mean a big uptake of use of satellites, he said. But satcom's lower bandwidth per square meter than a terrestrial network means it will "always play a niche role," he said.
Hughes, which last week announced a demonstration of its 5G backhaul carrying capability of its Jupiter system, has agreements in the U.S. with Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T for managed 5G services for enterprises, emailed Bhanu Durvasula, Hughes vice president-international division. It also is leading a private 5G implementation in Washington state for the DOD using Dish Network spectrum, he said. Durvasula said the company already partners with mobile network operators globally for 2G, 3G and 4G satellite backhaul, and the Jupiter interoperability demonstration shows it can support 5G for mobile operators.
Terrestrial capacity has and likely will continue to outstrip satellite capacity, but SES' upcoming mPower generation of satellites will add significant throughput, SES Senior Sales Manager-Fixed Data James King said in the webinar. He said with SES' medium earth orbit mPower and various LEO constellations, the satellite universe is "on the cusp of an explosion of an integration of satellite service with fiber."
SES plans to begin launching its next-generation mPower satellites in Q3, with them being available for service in Q1 2023, King said. He said the company is contemplating growing its network beyond the 20 existing MEO satellites and the 11 mPower satellites. He said it also is considering non-equatorial orbit use to provide access to parts of the globe above 50 degrees north and below 50 degrees south.
The satellite world also has doubters. "I do not believe in LEO for communications," though it might have a role in Earth observation, emailed Reza Soleymani, Concordia University electrical and computer engineering professor. He said the best way satcom could integrate into a hybrid system is through high-throughput multibeam geostationary payloads. He said a combination of a terrestrial network with high throughput satellite can provide high quality coverage to sparsely populated remote areas but also be a complementary means for backhaul of 5G networks.