For many years,MediaTek has been actively promoting the innovation of satellite communication technology,working closely with industry partners to test and develop advanced 5G NTN solutions.
In fact,as early as August 2022,MediaTek announced that it had completed the world’s first 5G NTN satellite mobile phone laboratory connection test,enabling smart phones to access the Internet directly through satellite signals,and the future 5G mobile phones can be directly used as satellite phones.
The test was jointly completed by MediaTek and Rohde&Schwarz in Germany.Based on the functions and procedures defined in the 3GPP R17 specification,the test was jointly completed by MediaTek with the mobile communication chip carrying the 5G NR NTN satellite network function,in cooperation with the Low-Orbit Satellite Channel Simulator and the test base platform of Rohde&Schwarz.
In the laboratory environment,the simulated satellite has a height of 600 kilometers and a speed of 27000 kilometers per hour.The low-orbit satellite communication mode is adopted.
According to the latest introduction of MediaTek,the satellite communication product plans of MediaTek in the next few years will be based on the 3GPP 5G R17 standard,and the IoT-NTN and NR-NTN technologies will be developed simultaneously.
Among them,IoT-NTN technology is designed for low-rate connection,which is used to transmit text information and can communicate in both directions.
The current satellite network has supported IoT-NTN on a large scale,and the first batch of satellite communication smart phones adopting the joint development technology scheme will support this technology.
At present,MediaTek and Bullitt have cooperated to launch two commercial smart phones based on 3GPP NTN technology,Motorola defy 2 and CAT S75,both of which use MediaTek MT6825 3GPP NTN chipset to support Bullitt satellite communication services,which can be used for two-way satellite communication information transmission,location sharing,and SOS emergency call for help.
This chipset can be connected to the geostationary orbit(GEO)satellite and can be easily converted to the 3GPP NTN standard satellite network for use;Allow the equipment to automatically receive the information from the satellite without the need for the user to manually check the information;It also has longer battery life.
The MT6825 chipset of MediaTek adopts highly integrated independent design,and the equipment manufacturer can easily and quickly integrate in 5G and 4G devices such as smart phones.
Moreover,unlike other non-standard solutions,it is based on the 3GPP R7 NTN open standard,which has lower development difficulty and cost and can accelerate the product launch.
NR-NTN technology can achieve higher connection rate,support high-bandwidth applications such as video calls,and enable smart phones,Internet of Things devices,and cars to gain fast and reliable satellite communication advantages.
MediaTek is about to release a chipset product supporting NR-NTN,which is applicable to navigation,real-time communication and other application scenarios,and has broad prospects in personal,enterprise and industrial fields.