Dr. Paul Moakes of FWTG CommAgility

Satellite based communications solutions offer the ability to provide communications coverage over large geographical areas not served by ground‐based infrastructure. This is useful in providing rural broadband coverage, but critical when responding to natural disasters and terrorist breeches. In this scenario it is important to be able to quickly deploy equipment to an area which may have no existing infrastructure and provide sufficient bandwidth and reliability to support the modern rescue tools such as streaming video and real‐time monitoring data. The standardisation of enabling technologies for mission critical communications within the 3GPP’s long‐term evolution (LTE) specifications have led to LTE being viewed as a key platform for the public safety networks. Mission critical pushto‐talk (MCPTT), end‐to‐end security, and real‐time video surveillance are key features which can be delivered by an LTE network.

Unsurprisingly the combination of the coverage of satellite and the public safety features of LTE is viewed as a powerful combination. 3GPP studies into the roles and benefits of satellites in 5G have led to Technical Specifications capturing specific requirements for satellite access support. This presentation discusses a number of competing architectures for implementing 3GPP standards over satellite each with their own merits: mobile ad‐hoc networks (MANETs) with satellite backhaul and satellite broadcast networks. We then discuss the challenges with network implementation and the considerations required for deployment.

Address:Chief Technical Officer, , United States