Nokia Bell Lab’s Thierry Klein says he’s what some might call a “ space geek ” – and while he’s never traveled in orbit, a planned mission with NASA will bring an LTE network to the Earth. moon bring him a little bit closer.
4G LTE networks are well established here on Earth, but what does it take to translate cellular technology into lunar surface applications?
FierceWireless spoke with Klein, head of the Enterprise and Industrial Automation Research Lab at Nokia Bell Labs, to find out.
To begin with, it takes a lot of testing. When a mobile site goes down or something isn’t working properly on a terrestrial network, line up the technician or technical team to find a solution. On the Moon, however, aid isn’t exactly a truckload (or even a rocket launch) away.
“You can never test enough,” Klein told Fierce.
Fortunately, the latest mission with NASA isn’t Nokia’s first foray into LTE on the moon. The Finnish supplier was the technology partner for a previously privately funded project in 2018 with Vodafone and Audi to put LTE on the moon.
That mission has never been flown, but Nokia has already built an LTE system for it. It set up configurations exactly as they would be used on the Moon, to test performance, range, throughput, and more. According to Klein, about 25 tests were conducted in climatic chambers for extreme conditions and stress factors such as shock, vibration, operation in a vacuum, thermal and radiation.
The new project is part of NASA’s Artemis program, and Nokia won a $ 14.1 million prize for the winning ‘Tipping Point’ proposal that the space program had asked for to help develop technologies with the goal of sustainable human operations on the planet. lunar surface by 2030.
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Now, however, Nokia must integrate the equipment with a lunar lander developed by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, and development and testing remains to be done to meet the requirements for the specific mission – which, while similar, is also unique.
“That’s really the focus for us this year,” said Klein of development, integration and testing.
The intended launch date is sometime in 2022. No location has yet been determined for the mission, but it is aimed at the south pole of the moon for operation for several weeks of moonlight.
Beam me up
So what does an LTE network for the moon look like? Nokia’s plans start with equipment optimized and hardened to withstand extreme conditions, from takeoff to landing, to intense radiation once on the surface.
It’s all the commercial network elements scaled down to what essentially becomes an entire LTE network in a box, Klein said.
“You’ve integrated your radio, your baseband, your core, all of your functionality into a single compact unit that will be deployed on the lunar module,” Klein said, along with antennas. He compared it to a small cell with an integrated evolved packet core (ePC).
The user equipment equivalent (UE) is attached to the rover, also with its own antennas, to establish the connection from the lunar module to the UE on the rover.
The antennas do not radiate down from a typical tower height of 30 meters, but are mounted between 3 and 5 meters above the ground. That has a big impact on reach, Klein noted, and the project focuses on two scenarios.
One is the short range where the rover is 300 to 400 meters from the lander, and a second longer range target where the rover is up to 3 miles from the lander. It’s something Nokia says is achievable based on experimental validation with its equipment, power levels and height, Klein said.
In addition to the LTE system, Nokia offers business maintenance software that reconnects to Mission Control for management, maintenance, configuration and remote control of the network itself.
The Moon offers its own unique terrain challenges, but one advantage is that you won’t find skyscrapers like you would in the center of a metropolitan area.
“The lunar landscape is very different, no obstacles, no buildings, no trees,” said Klein. “At the same time, you have valleys, craters and boulders, but it’s generally open terrain so that helps with the range.” And electromagnetic waves propagate even without an atmosphere.
Looking for a signal?
The purpose of the mission isn’t for astronauts to video chat or send GIFs – at least not initially.
Space communications typically use proprietary technologies developed by defense or aerospace companies, Klein said, with Wi-Fi used on the International Space Station. And this is different from direct communication from space to Earth using satellites or other technologies.
No cellular technologies are used in space, Klein said. So it would be the first time that cellular has come into play for communication on the lunar surface or in space.
As an unmanned space mission, its primary purpose is to establish surface communications on the moon – with data connections between the lunar lander and a custom-built equivalent of an end-user device mounted on the rover. For this project, that mainly includes HD video and data transmission from the rover to the lander, as well as the remote control of the rover.
Nokia hopes to bring advanced capabilities such as throughput, latency, reliability and other features of 4G. In the future, access to information, machine interactions, speech and video will be part of the picture when astronauts enter Lunar, Martian or other space missions.
“In the future, they will be manned missions so that astronauts can talk to each other, collect machines, sensors, devices, and really all of their video, voice, biometric, telemetry, sensor data that they can collect. automation and robot control, ”said Klein.
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While NASA strives to establish a lasting presence on the moon, a human element also plays a role and motivates Nokia.
“We use cellular technologies every day and astronauts are also using these capabilities in their personal lives,” said Klein, and Nokia believes they should be able to access them while on missions, not just here on Earth.
Testing, testing
There are four main areas for Nokia to prepare to ensure that equipment and software are robust enough.
The first is to make sure it survives takeoff and landing, Klein explained, with mechanical stressors such as shock, vibration and acceleration.
The second is being able to work in extreme environments, with temperature ranges, working in vacuum and radiation.
Radiation is one of the most unique challenges in space, according to de Klein.
The impact of radiation on software is that it can turn bits in code “and your code suddenly stops working.” The question becomes how to protect yourself and recover from it. And not all hardware components are equally sensitive to radiation, he explained.
Third is reliability, as mentioned earlier.
“Here you just can’t send someone to change the equipment, so it has to be absolutely reliable, you have to have redundancy both on the hardware and the software and you have to be able to configure, reboot and manage remotely. your gear, ”Klein said.
And fourth, it’s all about size, weight and strength. According to Klein, that means integrating as much as possible into a single form factor and optimizing power consumption so that dimensions and functions are slimmed down to just what is needed. But it’s a balancing act against the third point of reliability and robustness, he noted, with double redundancy on the hardware elements.
While radiation can be unique to space, small footprints, energy consumption and weight are also important for a terrestrial network.
“Not only is it exciting to put it in space, but we see that we will push the technology and development capabilities that will be applicable in terrestrial environments,” said Klein. “By doing this, we will absolutely learn and optimize networks and then bring those lessons back to Earth and apply them in our commercial product for industrial industrial applications.”
Imagine drilling rigs or mines, where remote control applies in addition to small form factors.
The team looks forward to a successful mission to validate performance and deliver models so that they can design and dimension for future applications, possibly on a larger scale in space.
On the personal side of Klein and the team, he said the most exciting aspect is that the technologies that Nokia Bell Labs have built are pushing them beyond current boundaries.
“It’s just a really exciting opportunity to go as far as you can, maybe literally,” Klein said.