New track in space: What exactly is satellite communication in the 6G era?

Recently, Huawei and Apple have launched satellite communication functions for their mobile phones, which has become a highlight. Many mobile phone manufacturers have also turned their attention to satellite communication. Looking to the future, satellite communication services that allow mobile phones to directly connect to satellites will be the general trend and an important symbol of the 6G era.

What can satellite communications do?

Relying on the BeiDou-3, Huawei was the first to apply satellite communications to smartphones, marking that smartphones have entered the "new space track". So what is the use of satellite communications for mobile phones? How can mobile phones be related to satellites? Is this a farce or a breakthrough? And for ordinary smartphones, does satellite communications play a big role? Yes and no. On the one hand, it actually varies from person to person and from place to place. For some people, they may have always lived in urban areas, and their daily lives are all indoors or in the community. They will never leave the coverage of ground base stations. So for this part of people, current satellite communications cannot play a special role.

But for some people working in the wild and at sea, it is very important to support satellite communications. The environment in which these people live is generally remote and the signal is relatively poor, so the functions of their mobile phones will be restricted. In deserts, oceans, forests and other scenarios far away from operator base stations, if the smartphone has satellite communication function, once an emergency occurs, these people can send a message for help to the outside world through the satellite communication function. How many news reports on the Internet are about tragedies caused by loss of contact in the wild? Even if you are not in the wild or the Gobi wilderness, when a natural disaster occurs, you can seek rescue through the satellite communication function when you are trapped and helpless.

How to achieve satellite communication?

Mobile phone satellite communication is not a very advanced technology. Some people have tried it in the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, satellite communication technology has flourished. With medium and low orbit satellite constellation systems as air transfer platforms, satellite mobile communication systems have begun to develop rapidly.

Satellite communication is currently mainly used to realize the emergency text messaging function. As the name suggests, some brief contact information can be sent directly through the communication satellite in the sky. Satellite communication is the communication between radio communication stations on the earth using satellites as relays. In combination with the use scenario of mobile phone direct connection to satellite, it means that the mobile phone is connected to the satellite in space for text transmission.

The main difference between satellite communication and operators' cellular network communication is that satellite communication does not require ground base stations. Instead, it uses satellites as relays to receive and forward signals and amplify wireless signals, thereby achieving communication between mobile phones, satellites and ground stations.

Looking to the future

Satellite communication technology is likely to affect the future development of 6G technology. In recent years, the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, Industry and Information Technology and other departments have issued a number of documents to support satellite communication technology.

The plan of this series of documents is divided into multiple stages for deployment and promotion, paving the way for the arrival of the 6G era. Therefore, even now, it seems to be of little use to some consumers. But in the days to come, it may be a major breakthrough. For these plans and deployments, we can see their "ambition", and to realize this ambition requires the efforts of many companies and talents. As a veteran company in the communications industry, China Mobile actively responds to the call of the country to create satellite-ground integrated communication service products and promote the popular application of Beidou short messages. If you want to have a say in the global communications field and want to take the lead in the competition among major powers, the development and application of technology cannot be delayed.

Author: Huang Xiaoli

Unit: China Mobile Shandong Company