Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com Sept. 6, according to ZTE Technology release, on the afternoon of August 26, China Mobile Research Institute, together with ZTE, Transportation Communications Information Group, China Mobile Beijing and other industrial partners, jointly released the outfield verification results of the world's first operator 5G NTN (non-terrestrial network, non-terrestrial network) technology. Based on 3GPP R17 NTN protocol, this verification breaks through the challenges of 36000 km ultra-long one-way distance and ordinary mobile phone direct connection, forming two innovative solutions of ultra-large time delay dynamic compensation and RF data conversion between satellite and ground, realizing the end-to-end full-link technology connection of 5G NTN, and verifying the feasibility of mobile phone direct connection to satellite under the premise of meeting 3GPP protocol.

Combined with the market demand of satellite couplet of things and the value of NB-IoT NTN scenario, China Mobile's joint partner first carried out a pilot project based on high-orbit satellite, which is composed of user terminal, satellite, satellite gateway station, base station, core network and service server. the network topology is as follows. The L-band satellite and the ground gateway station are located between the NTN terminal and the base station to complete the air port message transmission and the ground gateway station to dock with the 5G NTN base station. The terminal accesses the ground core network and service platform through satellite, gateway station and NTN base station in turn to realize the end-to-end service connection of satellite-ground integration.

CTOnews.com learned that ZTE said that the outfield verification of 5G NTN, the world's first operator, showed that the measured performance was in line with expectations, supported short message, voice intercom and other services, and fully verified the landing capability of mobile phone direct satellite technology in terms of architecture, protocol, equipment and so on. In terms of test results, the RF ACLR index of the base station is better than that of the gateway station, the link quality meets the expectations, the ping 64-byte delay is about 4s, the short message service function is normal, the voice intercom is clear and smooth, the performance meets the expectations, and basically has the feasibility of landing. The pilot verifies the feasibility of NTN networking for transparent forwarding of high-orbit satellites in terms of architecture, the feasibility of NTN in solving the problems of long delay and wide coverage in terms of protocols, and the ability of communication equipment to increase mobile phone direct-connected satellite mode in terms of equipment, which is a breakthrough of NTN technology "from 0 to 1".

The outfield verification of 5G NTN technology has realized the direct connection between the high-orbit synchronous satellite and the ground terminal for the first time, and completed the end-to-end connection of services. in the follow-up, special pilot projects for personal emergency and couplet collection and other actual services will continue to be carried out in Beijing, Yunnan and other provinces. In the future, more comprehensive basic business verification and performance evaluation of 5G NTN technology will be carried out based on medium-orbit and low-orbit satellites, which will lay a solid theoretical and technical foundation for mobile directly connected satellites.

5G NTN technology supports smartphone and IoT terminal access at the present stage. Smartphones can realize text message, voice intercom and broadband Internet access through directly connected satellites, creating global ubiquitous connections in remote areas, oceans, civil aviation and so on. With the advancement of 3GPP NTN standard research and the enhancement of satellite capabilities, it is expected that 5G NTN will gradually support more frequency bands and onboard processing capabilities. In view of the Internet of things terminal scenario, the Internet of things application packet is smaller, occupies less satellite bandwidth, the industry chain is more mature, terminal cost and power consumption are lower, which may be prior to 5G mobile phones to achieve landing applications.

What is the NTN technology NTN (non-terrestrial network, non-terrestrial network) is a direct communication technology between terminal and satellite based on the new air port technology developed by 3GPP in the R17 stage. Aiming at the problems of long distance, fast movement and wide coverage of satellite communication scene, such as large Doppler frequency deviation, large signal attenuation and large propagation delay, NTN designs the air port enhancement protocol, and introduces advanced technologies such as scheduling timing management, HARQ function scheduling, uplink transmission delay compensation, air-to-ground fast switching and so on, which already has the basic satellite communication capability.

NTN is an important supplement to ground cellular communication technology, and it is one of the technical directions of mobile phone directly connected satellite. The integration of satellite communication network and ground 5G network can provide ubiquitous coverage without the limitation of topography and landform, connect the multi-dimensional space of air, sky, earth and sea, and form an integrated ubiquitous access network, so that the whole scene can be accessed on demand.

NTN is an important feature of 3GPP R17, which continues to evolve in 5G-Advanced and has become an important part of the 3GPP Release 18 work plan. NTN includes two working groups: NTN-IoT (Internet of things terminal access based on non-land network) and NTN-NR (5G intelligent terminal access based on non-land network). NTN-IoT focuses on satellite IoT services that support low-complexity eMTC and NB-IoT terminals, such as global asset tracking (such as maritime containers or other terminals outside the coverage of cellular networks) NTN-NR uses 5G NR framework to achieve smart phones directly connected to satellites to provide low-speed data services and voice services.

In terms of global network coverage, there are still more than 80% of land areas and more than 95% of marine areas without ground network coverage. 5G NTN technology enables mobile phones to be directly connected to the cellular broadband network through satellite, thus building a heaven-and-earth fusion network with ubiquitous connections, rich scenes, high integration of industry chain and low cost of operation and maintenance.

For customers, taking advantage of the strong coverage capability of NTN network, we can theoretically build a full-time public emergency communication network based on mobile phone direct connection, provide ubiquitous communication network services, create global ubiquitous connections in remote areas, oceans, civil aviation, and provide full scene services such as SMS, voice, Internet of things, public emergency communications, wide area Internet of things, etc.

Facing the industry, through the deep integration of the two major industry chains of cellular communications and satellite communications, the form of IoT terminals connected to satellites will develop in the direction of low cost, miniaturization, low power consumption and other ease of use, so that smartphones can be directly connected to satellites, resulting in economies of scale and driving down the price of satellite connections.

For operators, it provides a low-cost and wide coverage scheme, which does not need to build and maintain cellular base stations in remote areas with sparse users, sea surface and other areas, which can significantly reduce the number of base stations and centralized deployment, thereby reducing the network construction and operation and maintenance costs of operators.

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