Nokia Bell Lab ‘s Thierry Klein calls it a “space geek” – and while it’ s never traveled to orbit, a NASA – planned mission to establish an LTE network on the Moon takes a bit. closer to it.
4G LTE networks are well established here on Earth, but what does it take to translate cellular technology for applications on the lunar surface?
FierceWireless spoke to Klein, head of the Enterprise Research and Business Automation Lab at Nokia Bell Labs, to find out.
For starters, it takes a lot of testing. When a cell site goes down or something is not working properly in a ground network, queue up the technician or engineering team to resolve. On the Moon, however, the help of just rolling a truck (or even launching a rocket) is not helpful.
“You can never do enough testing,” Klein told Fierce.
Fortunately then, NASA ‘s latest mission is not Nokia’ s first study into lunar LTE. The Finnish retailer was a technology partner for a previously privately funded project in 2018 with Vodafone and Audi to put LTE on the Moon.
That mission never traveled, but Nokia already built an LTE system for that purpose. He set up an arrangement just as it would be used on the Moon, to determine performance, range, throughput and more. Approximately 25 tests were performed in environmental chambers, according to Klein, for extreme conditions and pressures such as shock, vibration, vacuum, thermal and radiation operation.
The new project is part of NASA’s Artemis program, and Nokia won a $ 14.1 million award for its “Tipping Point” award that the space program sought to help develop technologies with the goal of sustainable human activity. on the surface of the moon by 2030.
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Now, however, Nokia needs to integrate the equipment with a lunar device developed by Houston-based Intuitive Machines and development and testing remains to be done to align with requirements for the specific mission. is available – which, it seems, is unique.
“That’s the focus for us this year,” Klein said of development, integration and testing.
The target launch date is 2022. A space has not been finalized for the mission, but it is aimed at the South Moon Pole to operate over several weeks of daylight Lunar.
Beam me up
So what is an established lunar LTE network like? Nokia’s plans start with equipment that has been developed and hardened to withstand extreme conditions, from takeoff to landing, to once-intense intense radiation.
All of the commercial network elements are reduced in an LTE network entirely in a box, according to Klein.
“Your radio, your baseband, your heart, all your activities are connected to one tight unit that is inserted into the lunar antenna,” Klein said, along with antennas. It resembled a small cell with an integrated evolution packet core (ePC).
The equivalent user device (UE) is connected to the rover, also with its own antennas, to establish the connection from the lunar surface to the UE on the rover.
The antennas do not descend from a typical 100-foot tower height, instead connected between 3 to 5 meters from the ground. That has a big impact on a field, Klein noted, and the project focuses on two scenarios.
One is short, placing the rover 300 to 400 meters away from the surface, and the second is a longer range target where the rover would be up to 5 kilometers off the surface. Something Nokia believes can be achieved based on experimental testing with the equipment, power levels and altitude, Klein said.
Along with the LTE system, Nokia provides activity maintenance software that integrates mission-related control to manage, maintain, configure, and remote control the network itself.
The Moon has its own unique challenges, but one upside is that you won’t find any skyscrapers like you would in the middle of a major metropolitan area.
“The lunar landscape is very different, unobstructed, without buildings, without trees,” Klein said. “At the same time, you have valleys, and pits and boulders but it’s generally open to help with the range. ”And electromagnetic waves move even without air.
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The purpose of the mission is not for astronauts to video chat or send GIFs – at least not in the first place.
Space communications typically use proprietary technologies developed by defense or aerospace companies, Klein said, with Wi-Fi deployed on the International Space Station. And this is different than direct communication from space to Earth using satellites or other technologies.
No cellular technologies are used in space, Klein said. So this was the first time a cell came in for a lunar surface or space communication.
As an unmanned space mission, the main goal is to establish surface communications on the Moon – with data connections between the lunar surface and a purpose-built device of an end-user device connected to the rover. For this project, that primarily includes HD video and data transmission from the rover to the lander, as well as remote control of the rover.
Nokia hopes to deliver on advanced capabilities such as throughput, latency, reliability and other features of 4G. In the future, access to information, machine interaction, voice, and video will be part of the picture as astronauts enter Lunar, Martian or other space missions.
“In the future it will be crew missions so that astronauts can talk to each other, devices, sensors, devices, and actually get all the video, voice applications, biometric applications, telemetry, collection sensor data that they can collect as well as automated gin, and robotic control, ”said Klein.
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Down the line as NASA looks to establish a stable presence on the Moon a human element is also coming in and inspiring Nokia.
“We use cell technologies every day and astronauts in my personal life use those capabilities as well,” said Klein, who Nokia feels should have access to those while accomplishing missions, not just here on Earth.
Test, test
There are four key areas that Nokia needs to prepare to ensure that hardware and software are robust enough.
The first ensures survival from launch and landing, Klein explained, with mechanical pressures such as shock, vibration and acceleration.
The second is to be able to operate in real environments, including temperature ranges, working in vacuum and radiation.
Radiation is one of the most unique space challenges, according to the Klein.
The effect of radiation on software is that it can turn pieces into code “and suddenly your code will no longer work. “The question grows as you need to defend against it. And not all hardware parts are equally susceptible to radiation, he explained.
The third is reliability, as previously mentioned.
“Here there is no way you can get someone to change the equipment, so it has to be completely reliable, you have to have it removed, both on the product -hard and on the software and you need to be able to configure, reset and control remotely. your equipment, ”said Klein.
And the fourth one is about size, weight and power. That means integrating as much as possible into a single form factor, according to Klein, and making the best use of power so that dimensions and functions are reduced to exactly what is required. But it is a balancing act against the third point of reliability and strength, he noted, with a double overlap on the hardware elements.
While radiation may be unique for space, small traces, energy consumption, and pressure are also important for a terrestrial network.
“It’s not just exciting to put it in space, but we see that we would be pushing for the technological and development capabilities that will be appropriate in terrestrial environments as well,” said Klein. “By doing this we will learn and develop networks and then take those lessons back to earth and apply them to our commercial product for enterprise business applications. ”
Rigs or picture oil mines, where remote operation is also related to small form factors.
The team is looking forward to a successful mission, to demonstrate performance as well as provide models so they can design and measure for future applications that may be on a larger scale in space .
On the personal side for Klein and the team, he said, the most interesting thing about the technologies that Nokia Bell has built is pushing them beyond the usual boundaries.
“It’s a very exciting opportunity to take something as far as you can, perhaps literally,” Klein said.