ARTES Advanced Technology 3GPP Narrow-Band Internet of Things (NB-IoT) User Sensor Integration into Satellite
Years 2020-2021 (18 months)

The activity is intended to develop and to validate adaptations to the Uu’s PHY, MAC, RLC, PDCP, and RRC layers to make it performance over satellite. Adaptations to any higher protocol layers of the user and control plane (including the NAS) shall be made if required. Apportionment of the eNB’s and core network’s logical functions between satellite and ground shall be considered. Hence, to address these needs, this activity is intended develop an on-board eNB capable of supporting the adapted 3GPP NB-IoT standard within the mass, power and volume constraints of a small platform (<12U). The on-board eNB is intended to be integrated in a test bed capable of emulating different scenarios as well as relevant channel impairments to validate its performance in realistic conditions. 

The project aims at developing a demonstrator where the communication between a NB-IoT user and the satellite eNB is functionally verified. The main challenges are:

• assessing the impact of the non-terrestrial environment on the technologies already developed for the terrestrial component;
• spin-in terrestrial technologies in order to make them operate in the non-terrestrial component;
• developing a suitable platform for the spin-in assessment and for future standardization;
• functional and performance verification of the NB-IoT over satellite.
  
  

The focus is on the adaptation of terrestrial technologies developed and studied within 3GPP for 5G systems to satellite scenarios and their implementation on HW and SW platforms.