Space-enabled Internet of Things at Berlin 5G Week
Satellite-on-the-Move van from the Munich Spacecom Labs
November 19, 2018: ESA’s first live over-the-air demonstration of 5G enabled by satellite began on November 15th , as an ingenious set-up of European space and ground nodes showed a crowd in Berlin how it can help connect devices in the much-lauded ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT).
The purpose of the exercise was to prove that space can deploy 5G services anywhere on Earth, no matter how isolated, congested or on-the-move the application.
The demonstration was performed at the 9th FOKUS FUSECO Forum at Fraunhofer FOKUS using SATis5, an experimental testbed developed under partnership between ESA and a European consortium primed by Eurescom, with Fraunhofer-FOKUS, Fraunhofer-IIS, SES, Newtec GmbH, VT iDirect, Berlin Technische Universität, and Bundeswehr University Munich.
Over the course of the next year, the testbed will simulate different scenarios in which satellites can deliver 5G, such as broadband connectivity in remote areas, massive machine-to-machine/IoT, communications on the move and offsetting high traffic.
The SATis5 demonstration will continue running experiments until the end of 2019, after which the testbed will remain operational and it could be made available to other ESA-funded demonstrations of satellite-enabled 5G services.
More Information: https://artes.esa.int/projects/satis5
