WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin announced Nov. 16 it plans to launch a payload to orbit next year to demonstrate 5G connectivity from space. The experiment is part of a larger project, known as 5G.MIL, that the company started in 2020 in response to military demand for high-speed wireless communications.
By branching the latest cellular technology into space, the company ultimately hopes to forge what it calls an “all-domain network” — or a seamless communications web between space assets, aircraft, ships and ground forces.
Dan Rice, Lockheed Martin’s vice president for 5G.MIL programs, said the company in October completed a successful hardware-in-the-loop test of a 5G non-terrestrial network payload and is moving forward with plans to launch a satellite to low Earth orbit in 2024 for a space demonstration.
He said this payload is the industry’s first regenerative advanced 5G satellite base station for a non-terrestrial network. A regenerative payload enables direct, satellite-based communications, bypassing terrestrial networks when necessary. The satellite base station communicates with other satellites and with ground stations. In a regenerative base station, the signal processing and radio access network is onboard the satellite.
Commercial companies have demonstrated 5G from space but the networking processing functions are performed on the ground, and the satellite is a relay node to connect the ground to a user. “In our case, the radio access network, all of that software and hardware, the core network that does user authentications is all on the satellite payload itself,” Rice said. “That creates additional resiliency in cases where the satellite may be operating over territory where you perhaps don’t have secure communications to the ground.”
During the lab test, the satellite base station and user equipment on the ground successfully connected and transferred data, including live video…
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