Adapting Commercial 5G Terrestrial Networks for Space

We are witnessing the dawn of a new era in space travel. NASA plans to send men and women back to the moon within the next few years to establish a lunar base, private enterprises like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are bringing space adventures to the masses, and SpaceX has its sights set on Mars. It is truly an exciting time for the aerospace industry. In parallel with this renaissance in space travel and exploration, we are seeing major advances in wireless communications with the emergence of 5G and early efforts to begin defining future 6G capabilities. As we send more people into orbit, colonize the moon and travel to other planets, there will be a natural demand for communications in space with comparable capabilities to the communication networks we have here on earth. This paper investigates challenges of, and potential solutions for, providing an “earth-grade” wireless network to support orbiting user equipment, lunar surface communication, and planetary exploration. Key features of emerging 5G systems to enable seamless communication throughout the solar system are presented. Specific challenges include Doppler effects, near-far problems, propagation delays and inhospitable environments for wireless network deployment. At the same time, there are also some advantages to space based systems that can be leveraged to optimize 5G performance. These include a priori knowledge of ephemeris data for orbiting bodies, line-of-sight propagation, and the absence of atmospheric effects, foliage and manmade structures. While many features in the current 3GPP standards are still applicable, these unique aspects of space communications that will require some adaptations of the current standards. These adaptations will be discussed in general and applied to specific use cases such as Lunar surface and relay communications and Earth orbiting satellites in LEO, MEO, and GEO.