The Satellite and Terrestrial Network for 5G (SaT5G) has successfully demonstrated a number of 5G over satellite use cases.
The organisation consists of 16 partners including SES, Broadpeak and BT.
It aims to develop a cost-effective “plug and play” satcom solution for 5G to enable mobile operators and network vendors to accelerate 5G deployment across all geographies and multiple use cases while at the same time creating new and growing market opportunities for satcom industry stakeholders.
As part of the demonstration, SaT5G showed a network that integrates 5G over parallel satellite and terrestrial delivery paths to provide enhanced QoE for users consuming 4K video content. The demonstration highlighted how a Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) proxy can incorporate bit rate adaptation, link selection and enhance layered video streams for future satellite and terrestrial integrated networks.
It also showcased over-the-air satellite multicast technology for the delivery of live channels using a MEC platform for Content Delivery Network (CDN) integration with efficient edge content delivery. This highlights the benefits in terms of bandwidth efficiency and delivery cost of using a satellite-enabled link for provisioning live content in a 5G system.
Other parts of the demonstration included 5G technology on-board aircraft, leveraging virtualised services for content distribution and an integrated approach for 5G connectivity-based Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satcom solution.
Mike Fitch, technical manager of SaT5G, said: “SaT5G is about integrating satellite links with heavy emphasis on standardisation to allow trusted operation and to facilitate industry adoption. The focus is on eMBB to fixed and mobile networks, including support for orchestration and slicing, with the satellite links providing backhaul connectivity either alone or in parallel (multilink) connectivity with terrestrial links. Innovations from the project include satellite modem VNFs, business process modelling including brokers, and improved multicast and multilink algorithms for use with satellite.”
