EchoStar<\/b> and aviation connectivity provider SkyFive <\/b>completed a series of flight tests demonstrating dual satellite and terrestrial connectivity for command and control (C2) of a drone with Airbus<\/b>. The tests are part of a project to commercialize urban air mobility within and between cities, using satellite and terrestrial connectivity. <\/p>\n
The tests were conducted with a drone from November 2022 to February 2023, near Munich, Germany, using a postage-stamp-sized air-to-ground (A2G) modem and service from SkyFive, paired with a Hughes 4510 S-band modem and satellite service from EchoStar.<\/p>\n
SkyFive CTO Dr. Michael Ohm said this was the first time a drone was controlled over a C2 link from an A2G network and a satellite link at the same time. During the tests, telemetry data transmitted concurrently over the A2G and satellite transports. The satellite and ground connections operated simultaneously over the same S-band (2.1 GHz) frequency without interfering with each other. <\/p>\n
This performance is in line with dual-transport service according to International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) required communication performance (RCP) standards. <\/p>\n
\u201cThese demonstrations serve as an intriguing use case for future 5G non-terrestrial networks like the one EchoStar plans to develop in the S-band,\u201d commented Telemaco Melia, vice president and general manager of EchoStar Mobile. \u201cThanks to the new 3GPP Release 17 standards, we\u2019ll soon be able to put a single module into a remotely piloted urban aircraft for always on terrestrial and non-terrestrial 5G service \u2013 entering a new era of anytime, anywhere connectivity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Echostar recently tapped Astro Digital to manufacture a constellation of 28 Low-Earth Orbit satellites for S-band IoT services, and CEO Hamid Akhavan has said it is a \u201cstepping stone\u201d toward a wideband LEO-based 5G non-terrestrial network. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
EchoStar and aviation connectivity provider SkyFive completed a series of flight tests demonstrating dual satellite and terrestrial connectivity for command and control (C2) of a drone with Airbus. The tests are part of a project to commercialize urban air mobility within and between cities, using satellite and terrestrial connectivity. The tests were conducted with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}