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Electronics news

Lockheed Martin prepares 5G military satellite

Lockheed Martin has tested in laboratory conditions the technology for connecting 5G mobile networks to satellite communications.

The technology will be used on the TacSat satellite in 2024.

In testing, the satellite station and user equipment on the ground successfully connected and transmitted data, including streaming video.

The gNodeB base station includes a complete 5G New Radio (NR) radio access network (RAN) stack, a RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) and a 5G Stand Alone (SA) Core running on space-qualified hardware that will be installed on TacSat.

The system will be reprogrammed on-orbit using Lockheed Martin's SmartSat software-defined satellite architecture and can be built on a split architecture with the control unit (CU) on the ground and the unit (DU) on the satellite.

"The space link will provide high-speed backbone connectivity to 5G.MIL ground, airborne and maritime hybrid base stations, as well as direct access from orbit to user equipment operating under the 3GPP NTN standard," said Dan Rice, Lockheed Martin vice president of 5G.MIL programs.