On February 3, two space-ground integrated low-orbit test satellites equipped with China Mobile's spaceborne base station and core network equipment were successfully launched into orbit. Among them, the "China Mobile 01 satellite" is equipped with a spaceborne base station that supports 5G space-ground integrated evolution technology, and is the world's first on-board signal processing test satellite that can verify 5G space-ground integrated evolution technology;
Gao Tongqing, deputy general manager of China Mobile, said that China Mobile actively undertakes the mission of central enterprises, attaches great importance to the development of the integration of heaven and earth, innovates and builds a technology system of integration of space and earth, and accelerates the improvement of the industrial competitiveness of the integration of space and earth in mainland China through technology integration, standard integration, industrial integration and business integration. China Mobile bravely acted as a technology "pathfinder" and knocked out a "new path" for deep integration. The dual-satellite test system is the world's first space-ground integrated on-board processing and verification system for 5G evolution and 6G, and is an important breakthrough for China Mobile to promote the development of space-ground integration. At the same time, Gao Tongqing also put forward three proposals for the integrated development of heaven and earth: First, seize the source of market and business needs. Market and business needs are the foundation of the high-quality development of space-ground integrated technology and industry, and it is recommended to carry out in-depth research on scenarios, services and needs such as communication and IoT at home and abroad. The second is to grasp the user-centered core. The foundation of the integration of heaven and earth is to allow users to obtain a full range of services of "connection + computing power + capability" anytime and anywhere through intelligent terminals, especially to serve special scenarios, special groups of people and special needs. The third is to grasp the foundation of star-ground integration. Heaven and earth should go in the same direction, and technology and industry should gradually integrate into one, which is the fundamental goal of development.
"China Mobile 01 Satellite" is jointly developed by China Mobile and Satellite Mobile Lianxin, the satellite's spaceborne base station adopts lightweight, localized, green hardware design concept and high real-time, high flexibility, high reliability software design ideas, with two innovative technologies: one is software reconstruction and resource pooling technology, adapting to the evolving space-ground integration technology, and the other is the fusion technology of highly reliable algorithms and industrial-grade devices, which takes into account performance and cost while adapting to complex space environments such as particle irradiation, ionization, and vacuum.
Jointly developed by China Mobile and the Institute of Microsatellite Innovation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the "'Star Core' Verification Star" is equipped with the "Star Core" system of the spaceborne core network for the 6G distributed autonomous architecture, and adopts localized software and hardware to support on-orbit software reconstruction, flexible deployment and autonomous management of core network functions, and further improve the efficiency and reliability of the on-orbit operation of the spaceborne core network. This is also another milestone achievement of China Mobile's 6G development after the "three-body, four-layer and five-sided" network architecture.
The orbital altitude of the test satellite is about 500 km. Compared with the 36,000-kilometer high-orbit satellite, the low-orbit satellite has obvious advantages such as low latency and large data transmission rate, and is an important platform for carrying the future space-ground integrated network. The satellite network based on the large-scale low-orbit constellation and the ground mobile system together form an integrated space-ground network, which can make up for the lack of terrestrial mobile network coverage, provide satellite Internet services with higher bandwidth, and further extend the terrestrial mobile network to three-dimensional spaces such as remote areas on land, ocean, and aviation, so as to provide consumers and thousands of industries with ubiquitous global connectivity and new services for integration. China Mobile will carry out on-orbit tests based on the test satellite to accelerate the integration of the satellite-ground technology industry to develop in depth.
China Mobile has also recently released three series of white papers in the field of space-ground integration, including the "6G Space-Earth Integrated Distributed Autonomous Network White Paper", "6G-Space-Earth Integrated Network Technology White Paper", and "Satellite Internet Innovation Application Scenario White Paper", which elaborate on the vision, technical system, and future development trend of space-ground integration, aiming to jointly promote the development and maturity of space-ground integrated network technology and promote the high-quality development of space-ground integration.