27 Highlights to "3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Mobile Telecommunications Technology on the Moon"
27 Highlights to "3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Mobile Telecommunications Technology on the Moon" https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dKOj-Yg-h4c1ZjPhDel3aO0OIIxCKiOq/view?usp=d... Abstract— Under NASA’s Artemis program, NASA is planning to send astronauts back to the Moon in the next couple of years. Near term missions will be analogous but much more sophisticated versions of the last couple of Apollo missions. However, unlike Apollo, this time NASA intends to put the infrastructure in place to support long term human presence and eventual industrialization of the Moon. To make this vision a reality, NASA plans to collaborate with commercial and international partners as much as possible as opposed to developing, building, and operating equipment on its own. Lunar infrastructure will eventually be built over time by many organizations, public and private, to support sustained human exploration, science, and industrial activities. Obviously, this vision for the future will be impossible without a robust lunar communications and navigation system that can support many users with varying degrees of services. On Earth, most people are very familiar with the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) 5G mobile telecommunications technology. NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation office would like to see a lunar communications and navigation network with similar capabilities to the cellular communication networks most of us enjoy today. Building such a network will require participation by many organizations. This paper will provide an overview of NASA’s interest in using 5G and beyond on the lunar surface; it will also describe current work based on 3GPP standards within NASA or funded by NASA, such as Nokia’s upcoming Tipping Point demonstration of 4G / LTE on the lunar surface. 6. SUMMARY In the not-so-distant future, there will be a sustained human and robotic presence on the Moon. As called out in NASA’s “Moon To Mars Objectives” that was recently published, a robust communications and navigation infrastructure will be required to support and enable this vision. Like the Earth’s internet, this infrastructure will need to increase in size and probably complexity as the number of users and applications grow. This “Lunar Internet of Things” will be a combination of networks and services with multiple provider systems, owned and operated by a combination of international and commercial entities. LunaNet is NASA’s overall architecture that envisions this robust communications and navigation infrastructure. A key component will be a lunar surface wireless network to support this upcoming sustained human and robotic presence. The authors believe that 3GPP cellular technologies and standards provide the ideal solution for this lunar surface wireless network. A space qualified lunar 3GPP network provides increased sustainable data rates, range, mobility, reliability, and scalability over other wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi, and fills a crucial role in the overall LunaNet architecture to bring the lunar surface closer to Earth.
participants (1)
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Gunnar Larson