Rendition of SES’ combined GEO/MEO constellation. Photo: SES.

SES is expanding its efforts to support 5G developments as part of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems (ARTES) project, SATis5, where it will be enabling demonstrations of satellite-terrestrial integration for 5G networks.

The testbed infrastructure will comprise SES’ fleet of Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites, which will be integrated with terrestrial networks. In addition to providing the space segment, SES’ headquarters in Luxembourg will also host a SATis5 testbed node with prototypes of networks for satellite integration, along with other nodes located in Berlin and Erlangen, and an additional portable node.

SATis5 will act as a best-practice pathfinder for the trials via live demonstrations of 5G satellite use cases such as Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) and massive Internet of Things (mIOT) usage scenarios. The demonstrations, which will start in 2018, will showcase satellite integration capabilities in a mix of infrastructures for 5G and foster adoption of satellite as part of the 5G architecture. In addition, the SATis5 testbed will support 5G standardization initiatives including the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).