18 Feb, 2022
Communications Consultants Worldwide Limited (CCww), innovator of 3GPP® technologies and Lekha Wireless Solutions Pvt Ltd. (Lekha), a technology solutions company with expertise in communications and embedded systems, announce today the creation of a test bench system for NTN (Non-Terrestrial Networks) IoT. This includes a UE protocol-stack + PHY combination and an eNodeB with integrated SDR.
Global IoT solutions require global coverage, made possible through satellites 'filling-in' where ground-based cellular IoT isn't available. 3GPP® Release 17 will specify narrow-band protocols for Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) and Geostationary (GEO) satellite communications. CCww and Lekha are re-purposing their joint Release 14 NB-IoT UE design, and Lekha's eNB design; both systems will handle the higher levels of Doppler, noise and delay encountered in satellite communications. The NTN versions of UE and eNB, with a system manager and channel emulator, will be integrated to produce a software test bench, to allow testing of NTN IoT without major up-front investment.
The development is partly funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) within its Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems (ARTES) Competitiveness & Growth programme.
The standard NB-IoT UE and eNB software stacks execute on Xilinx Zedboard and TI SoC respectively, and are available to license for development and test; services are offered for product development, integration and live test.
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