Welcome to CGI’s Perspectives on Space podcast series, where we explore the space industry in conversation with domain experts from across the globe. In this second episode, CGI experts Harjit Sheera, Jaime Reed and Andy Marr discuss how satellite communications are evolving to integrate with 5G networks, and what this means for consumers and businesses, today and for the future.
Satellite communications can help advance 5G networks by increasing network capacity, providing greater connectivity for rural areas, improving continuity of service, and enabling new use cases.
Addressing the growing demand for data
In terms of the evolution of mobile technology, “3G was about voice with a bit of data. 4G was very much about data. 5G is about the quantity of that data,” explains Jaime Reed, responsible for space applications and data platforms for CGI in the UK and Australia.
5G is designed to support an exponential increase in data capacity, says Andy Marr, who leads CGI’s hybrid 5G satellite communications program in the UK and Australia. “Satellites fill the gaps we can't reach with terrestrial coverage.”
“In the past, people wanted to check football scores on a text-based phone. Now, people want the ability to watch Netflix seamlessly, wherever they go,” adds Reed. “It's a complete change of capacity and customer experience. That's really where 5G comes in. It's a transformative step in mobile communications networks.”
“5G is the mobile network of devices, not just people,” Reed explains, including smart phones, appliances, TVs and utility meters, as well as car systems and even medical devices.
Increasing connectivity and resilience
Satellites can be a primary mechanism for getting the data to the Internet. They are particularly useful for enabling connectivity in rural and remote locations where it can be prohibitively expensive to build fiber networks.
Reed comments that satellites support deployment of 5G networks by “basically using that satellite communications pathway to take the data from the radio cell sites and pass it back to the core network without going through a fiber network.”
Satellites also can backup terrestrial networks to help mobile operators ensure continuity of service, providing instant availability at a fairly low set-up cost. Network resilience is particularly critical where service availability is a matter of life and death (e.g., for public safety and emergency services).
Going forward, Marr sees 5G capability being built directly into satellites to enable a range of new services. He also foresees direct communications between satellites and mobile phones.
Improving food security, sustainability and more
Reed adds that “connectivity enables you, fundamentally, to design well-architected and engineered systems. It reduces the friction in the systems on which our lives depend.” One example is food security—an increasing challenge around the world and an area where better network connectivity can help make supply chains far more efficient.
Another example is more sustainable agriculture. “There are well-documented examples where adding sensors and connectivity to the network, and the analytics that come with it, have enabled huge reductions in water being used for irrigation,” for example, says Reed. But today, many farmers can’t use mobile technology due to a lack connectivity in rural areas. As satellite technology fills those gaps, more farmers can use mobile data to improve crop monitoring, irrigation and security.
Read the transcript, below
- 1: Introductions
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Sheera:
Hi, and welcome to the second podcast in CGI's space series, exploring how space-related data has become part of our everyday life. I'm Harjit Sheera, and I'm delighted to be your host again today. We will be looking at how satellite communications have evolved to utilize 5G architecture, and what this means for stakeholders and users today and for the future.
As always, we've invited along our resident subject matter experts, who are going to be joining me today, from CGI's space, defense, and intelligence business unit in the UK. Jaime Reed is the Vice-President responsible for applications of space technology, and Andy Marr is a Director responsible for 5G and satcom hybrid networks. Hi, Jaime, hello, Andy, and thank you for taking the time the speak with me today. Could you tell us a little bit more about the roles that you hold within CGI?
Reed:
Hi, Harjit, thanks very much, delighted to be on the podcast today. I look after our space data platforms and applications business. What that does is, it develops solutions for receiving, processing, and exploiting satellite imagery, and using satellite communications data. And we work on translating that space technology delivered by satellites above our heads into real-world solutions. Those solutions are designed to improve people's lives and help businesses to grow.
Sheera:
Thanks, Jaime. And Andy, can I ask you the same question, also?
Marr:
Yes, so I lead CGI's hybrid 5G satcoms program. We're looking at where we can integrate satellite communications with terrestrial services. So, for example, we built the 5G/6G hub for the European Space Agency, which lets them demonstrate key hybrid network use cases. We invited industry to collaborate and validate their technologies in the area.
Sheera:
Okay, great, thank you very much. And, just to get a little bit of context, in terms of how you came into this industry, can I start with you, Jaime, and ask you how you came to work within the space sector?
Reed:
Well, I have a fairly tortuous and convoluted history, really. I started off as a physicist, funnily enough. I was very interested in how the natural world works, the processes that govern it. And I became increasingly interested in environmental monitoring, but also at the same time very interested in solid state physics, so solid state detectors in particular. And the space industry combines both of those two things. It combines using solid state detectors as sensors on board the satellites, and that's used to acquire imagery and data about the Earth, and the Earth's climate, as well as exploring other worlds, so the climate and atmospheres of other planets.
I did that for 13 years, developing space missions, using that technology, designing space missions. And over that time I became really interested in how we exploit that data and the analytics that we build on top of it. So that's why I joined CGI, really, working on the software and the data platforms using that technology. But I still retain a keen interest in detector physics and all that sort of thing.
Sheera:
Right, okay. And Andy, can I ask you the same question as well?
Marr:
Yeah, so I did maths at university, and then I was looking for something more applied. And also I didn't want to get a job yet.
Sheera:
Right.
Marr:
I did a Master's in Satellite Positioning Technology, so looking at the fundamentals of how GPS works, and that sort of stuff. That got me the job with CGI— Logica, as it was then. We did a lot of work on the Galileo program, the European GNSS program. I wound up working on our Skynet 5 satellite comms system, doing calculations on the power that you need to get the signals up to the satellite and back, things like that. Then I've worked with a range of commercial clients after that; various satcoms programs. A lot on the operations side, which is really interesting to see how all the satellite operations actually work. A few years ago, I saw the opportunity to develop 5G capability within that space.
Sheera:
Cool. So, as we're talking about satellite communication, what is it that you find the most exciting about the topic today, and where we are at today with the subject?
Marr:
Well it's now nice and cool.
Sheera:
Yeah.
Marr:
It's nice to be able to talk to people a bit about what we do. I think that the ability for them to affect all sorts of communications. You know, satellites are, by their nature, available in big areas across the world, and kind of fill in the gaps where we can't reach with terrestrial coverage, for example. I think that's quite exciting, to be able to help people in rural communities and fill in to public services where they really, really need to get somewhere quickly and not know where they're going.
Sheera:
Yeah.
Marr: So yeah, I think that's quite exciting.
- 2: Evolving data requirements
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Sheera:
So, I know we're going to have, hopefully, a nice broad range of audience, but can we take a little step backwards, and just start by talking, we know that 3G, and 4G, and 5G, we've heard those terms before. But what is the difference between those? What do they mean, first of all, and also how are they relevant? What have we been able to achieve from each of those? Maybe you can give us a brief kind of difference in terms of what's happening with each of those areas.
Marr:
Yeah, so there's plenty been introduced on each of the generations, but essentially the journey is that we started off with voice communications. And then as you come up towards 3G you start adding data into the mix. So we start being able to get data services and web services through there.
4G made all of that much faster, and the capacity goes up. So there's general increases in each of those generations, in terms of capacity and speed. But the interesting thing about 5G is it starts to add a lot more functionality into the mix that we can actually use to integrate satellites. So, for example, with 5G you can start doing a lot more processing of data at the location where your device is.
Sheera:
Okay.
Marr:
And that means that you're more efficient with the data that you're sending across the world.
Sheera:
Okay. And how does that relate to user experiences, in terms of as a user, what does that do for me?
Reed:
5G, I think the big difference between 4G and 5G, so what Andy said there was really correct. So, 3G was very much about voice, with a bit of data. 4G was very much about data. 5G is very much about the quantity of that data. There are so many devices now connected to mobile communications networks. So not just your mobile phones, but your smart meters in your home, your car, for example, your television, everything is now interconnected. So all the devices are connected. 5G is the mobile network of devices, not just people.
In order to enable that, you need much more quantity of data passing through the network. That means you need more capacity in the radio side of the network, so the radio network that accesses those devices. It means you need the network to have much more capacity internally, within that network, to move the data between the cell sites. And the whole network has to be controlled in a much more sophisticated way.
The network itself becomes more complicated. But also the type of services that consumers are used to experiencing has changed dramatically. So, in the days of 3G, you might remember a certain service called WAP.
Sheera:
Yeah.
Reed:
Everyone loves WAP. You know, it was that horrible little thing where you could check the cricket scores or the football scores on your text-based Nokia phone. Now, what people want is the ability to watch Netflix seamlessly, wherever they go. Maybe to play a computer game, a high-definition computer game, maybe in some kind of augmented or virtual reality, on a bus somewhere.
Sheera:
Yeah.
Reed:
It's just a complete sea change of capacity and experience, and customer experience that people are wanting to have on a daily basis. And that's really where 5G comes in. It's a transformative step in mobile communications networks.
- 3: Space signals support the terrestrial 5G infrastructure
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Sheera:
How can we expect space signals to support our terrestrial 5G infrastructure of it?
Reed:
So, 5G and satellites have an interesting relationship. And that's partly because satellites can support the deployment of 5G networks to start with. That's probably where consumers will see the first results of 5G integration with satellites. This is basically using that satellite communications pathway to take the data from the radio cell sites and pass it back to the core network without going through a fiber network.
So deploying fiber networks, optical fiber networks to the cell stations is quite expensive. Not all cell stations have that. So, those satellite networks can be used either as a primary mechanism for getting the data back to the Internet, or as a redundant backup method to provide additional resilience, for example. So, that's where we'll see that first, and we are beginning to see that first. And that's particularly true in rural locations, particularly true in Latin America, in Africa, for example, where it's prohibitively expensive to build fiber networks.
But going forward, what we'll see is that 5G capability being built directly into satellites. And what that will enable is a range of new services to be deployed from satellites, as well as direct communications between satellites and mobile phones. And it will make that integration much, much easier.
Sheera:
What kind of services? You mentioned that there'd be new services. Can you give us an insight into what kind of services you think can be developed?
Marr:
If you look at, even in the UK, even with 4G, 34% of the UK has only got what's defined as partial or no coverage. So we can use satcoms to fill some of those gaps. And on the resilience case, BT have already got something like 1,000 satellite terminals in the UK, providing a backup if those terrestrial networks go down. So, satellite's really good for that kind of thing, because you get this instant availability, and a fairly low set-up cost.
- 4: Satellites’ role in continuity of service
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Sheera:
I guess, there's the issue of continuity of service as well. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?
Reed:
Yeah, certainly. Thinking back to those use cases of folks using Netflix, for example. Other video services are, of course, available. But using those kinds of services, and wanting that seamless connectivity all the time. Mobile operators obsess and worry about continuity of service, because that's how they make their money. They need to be in constant communication with those devices.
Having the ability to resiliently back up those cell sites is quite valuable to them, just from a day-to-day perspective of making sure their customers are happy. As we all know, if you're not happy with your network provider, it's very easy to change these days. So, they really want to get that customer stickiness.
Then there's the other side of the coin, which is the mission critical use cases, like the emergency services, for example, where having that network there all the time, 99.99% of the time, is a life and death issue. So, more and more of that sort of service is provided commercially, or by the mobile network operators, as well as by governments. And there's always an interest in new ways to make those kind of services resilient and robust against the failures.
Sheera:
Okay.
Marr:
If I go on a train at the moment, for example, it might be that I'll have some level of connectivity when I get to the station, and that might drop a bit when I get indoors. And then when I get on the train, maybe I'll have a Wi-Fi that I can connect to, but I'm going to have to sign up for that, and I don't know what the speed's going to be like.
Sheera:
Yeah.
Marr:
I know that whenever I've been on the train it just seems to drop in and out quite a lot. What we're looking at in these kinds of areas, is trying to improve that, so that you actually have a seamless experience of just being able to get the same reception anywhere. I don't have to sign up to a Wi-Fi connection or anything like that. I can get the train to the airport, I can get on the plane, I've always got the same level of connectivity.
That's even more important with industry, where you've got automated devices that are reporting on. So, in the train for example, you might be reporting on something on the track side around the road. It might be reporting on the stability of the train. I might have a simple connectivity from the driver back to the train operators, for an emergency communication. Now that's got to always work.
Sheera:
Yeah.
Marr:
It can't suddenly swap between connectivity without something in the background being set up to do that. So, it becomes even more important to have that kind of continuity of service.
Sheera:
Okay, so I guess with all this additional continuity of service, you're able to meet more stringent requirements. I guess this is now opening up a whole new set of applications that you can now address.
Reed:
Yeah, of course. Satellites have been used in these contexts for many years. So it's not uncommon to see a satellite dish as you walk around, and it's not just broadband television, it's a variety of different services for which they're being used.
What we're seeing is the new generation of satellites being launched that have more capacity. They have lower latency, so we see the introduction of low earth orbit broadband networks and mega-constellations. And those new satellites are enabling us to meet the kind of quality of service requirements that these mission-critical use cases, these cases where customer experience is really critical, it enables satellites to come into those kinds of solutions.
Sheera:
Mm-hmm.
Reed:
So that leads to a lot of interest from the network operators that they didn't have before, because now they see that the satellite networks can meet their requirements. And then they open up these kinds of new avenues for the mission-critical services, because previously satellite networks didn't meet the requirements that are needed for those life and death situations, whereas now they do. So, that just opens up the number of use cases to which satellite technology could be provided and solutions too.
- 5: The evolution of satellite constellations
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Marr:
What Jaime's talking about is different types of satellite constellations.
Sheera:
Yeah.
Marr:
So, typically in the past and the present we have our geostationary satellites, which essentially rotate round the Earth at the same speed as the earth turns. So to us they seem stationary.
Sheera:
Yeah.
Marr:
If you can see them. And that's great, because you've got a known footprint which the satellite can reach. The beam comes down onto the Earth and you know exactly where it can talk to and where it can't talk to.
Sheera:
Yeah.
Marr:
And often those satellites can have quite a high throughput, high capacity. But the point above the earth at which that's possible is quite a long way away up. So the time it takes for the signal to get up and down is quite lengthy. So the latency of the communication is pretty high.
The new generations of satellites we’re seeing more of, like OneWeb and Starlink, are based on low earth orbit satellites which are, as the name suggests, much closer to the earth, so the signal can go up and down much faster. So, that's great for the service that you eventually get, although operationally it's a bit more complex, because they're going around the Earth much faster than we're turning. So you have to keep talking to a different satellite every few seconds from a known location.
Sheera:
Right, okay.
Marr:
So, there's new generations of satellite coming on, but what we're now starting to see is operators starting to think about how they can make the best of all those worlds. So, yes, I can use terrestrial when it's available, and that's likely to be the fastest if a service in a particular area is available. And, yes, I can use satellite when it's not available, or as a backup, or as part of the service.
But maybe I can use a different satellite network, depending on my quality of service requirements. So I can use the low earth orbit satellites when I need that low latency, when I'm streaming something which needs a huge amount of data coming back, the computer game example. So, I need instant feedback on whether I've hit the target. And maybe I can use the geostationary satellites where I don't actually need that. I need maybe to download a lot of data, but it doesn't need to be almost real time, it can happen over time. So, the systems that we're starting to see operators look at is to combine all of those things and use the best available network for the particular requirement.
- 6: Private vs. public satellite constellations
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Sheera:
Okay, so you mentioned there, Andy, a couple of private satellite networks, or satellite constellations. Do these private satellite constellations have any particular impact on the satellite communications, as opposed to the governmental constellations? Do you see any impact between those two at all?
Reed:
Well, I guess it's worth reflecting that, I think most people are perhaps not aware that the space sector has become less and less government-focused over the last few years. So, increasingly I would imagine that the general public are aware of initiatives like SpaceX and Starlink, and so on. But that's really the latest in a long trend of private satellite networks, starting with the privatization of organizations like Inmarsat, Iridium, for example, in the late '90s. A series of satellite networks which have been rolled out on a fully commercial basis.
These are fully commercial organizations. And they make their money by selling their capacity. So that's a trend, and I think we're seeing that accelerate over time. In fact, now we're seeing governments beginning to buy more and more of that capacity, so they don't need to launch their own satellites, so they can rely on the commercial sector. And we're seeing that those commercial organizations are able to bring innovation in far more quickly than governments.Sheera:
Okay.
Reed:
They're able to bring in more capacity, more flexible satellites. Capabilities like direct-to-mobile phone handset, which people in the satellite community have talked about for many years, but nobody's actually been able to do. Now we've seen two companies demonstrate that, in space, and they're hoping to roll out commercial networks in the future.
So that pace of the commercial innovation is accelerating. Consumers will see that, already see that on a day-to-day basis, and they will continue to see that in the future. And I expect that those commercial networks will become ever more powerful as consumers’ and businesses' demand for data rises exponentially over the coming years.Marr:
I think what one of the key considerations, when you've got all the private companies doing all this is the regulation side of things.
Sheera:
Okay.
Reed:
So, there are things that, when you're a private company, the spectrum that you use, so the frequencies which you're able to broadcast at, becomes very valuable.
Marr:
Mm-hmm.
Reed:
People might be aware of Ofcom selling off spectrum to mobile phone operators. And the spectrum at which satellite operators can operate is similar, and valuable to them. And that has a potential to mean that smaller operators can't get access to those areas.
Sheera:
Okay.
Reed:
So that's a kind of open question, I think, about how that gets dealt with in the future.
- 7: Innovation for new use cases
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Sheera:
I'm not going to notice a difference between using a private constellation or a government-owned constellation, I guess. All I'm going to see is new applications, things becoming faster for my use. I'm assuming that over the years there're only going to be more private satellites. So, looking forward, what new use cases can we expect to see in the coming years, thanks to the integration of 5G in space?
Reed:
Well, I think, Harjit, what we'll see is two things. One is in the consumer space, where I think the average consumer with their handset will see more seamless connectivity when they're on the move.
Today you get pretty good connectivity. Most people will find they get good connectivity in the city or a town, relatively good connectivity in a rural location in a country like the UK, and quite poor connectivity if they go abroad to a rural location, particularly outside of Europe or North America. And we'll see those gaps being filled in by satellite technology. As you go on your holidays, as you move around, your mobile phone will just stay more and more connected all the time. And you just won't notice it. It'll just be an everyday fact of life that you'll have connectivity all the time.
But where we will kind of see the step change in use cases will be in the business side. So, that lack of connectivity makes it very hard for some businesses to roll out services across all of their user base. The easiest example is farming.
Farming is a huge industry globally. But most of those farmers don't use mobile phone technology, they don't use digital technology because away from most towns and cities, in the fields where they're doing their jobs, they can't get any connectivity.
Sheera:
Okay.
Marr:
As we see those gaps being filled, those farmers, and the agricultural industry, will be able to use more and more of those data services. And that will enable new use cases like better crop monitoring, security, better irrigation. So a great example there is on-demand irrigation. A lot of irrigation is providing water all the time, regardless of whether it's needed. And that's a huge waste of water, which in some parts of the world is very precious.
So, there are well-documented examples where adding those sensors, and connectivity to the network, and the analytics that come with it, have enabled huge reductions in water being used for irrigation. So, it has a real, dramatic environmental benefit just from adding that connectivity.
Marr: Bear in mind that some of these places are really big as well, so the farmer's got to travel tens or hundreds of kilometers to actually go and check these sorts of things. So, these devices are really, really useful to them.Sheera:
Okay.
Marr:
But what tends to happen at the moment is that, often, devices can be set up for a particular network, for example, even if they use satellite at the moment, and the farmers sort of find that, although theoretically they can access all these devices and get all the data if they're available, actually that means they've got 200 devices accessing tens of different networks. And the cost even of operating them, and understanding what they're getting back is prohibitive.
So, actually being able to integrate those and say, "Actually all of those devices all work on one network," and in the background we'll worry about which they connect to, and how a service is provided to it, is quite valuable. It means that it actually becomes something that's not just theoretically beneficial, it's something they can actually use day-to-day.
Sheera:
Okay, so we're seeing that there's significant cost benefits, but also, they're helping to meet some environmental targets as well. So, we can see that a lot of these applications are now crossing through industries. Which I guess that's always been there, but it's becoming more prominent now.
Reed:
Yeah, and I think this is a systems problem. So, when you think about, "What does network connectivity and Internet connectivity give you?" It enables you, fundamentally, to design well-architected and engineered systems.
And when we think about the food system, for example, that's an example of a system which is incredibly complex. It includes growing food, harvesting it, looking after that food, transporting it, shipping it, getting it into the stores. And potentially doing all that under great time pressure. Increasingly with other complexities like customs, and conflict, and these sorts of things.
So, food security is becoming a really big and important issue for the world. And this is where improved network connectivity could help reduce some of that friction in that system and make those supply chains far more efficient. And that's true for food systems, but we're also now seeing just-in-time supply chains, for example manufactured goods, those sorts of things. Health and the healthcare industry.
This is a technology which, when integrated with terrestrial technology, so we've talked a little bit about satellite technology and terrestrial technology, but really, we're talking about those two things coming together. It just reduces the friction in the systems on which our lives depend, really. You may not see that, as a consumer, but behind the scenes all that work that's going in will, for example, reduce the cost of food that comes to your plate and mean you get more food. It might mean you get the pharmaceutical products you need more reliably, for example. It's all kind of behind the scenes, but that's happening every day.
Marr:
I mean, a simple example is at ports. So, the port needs to understand that the cost of a ship being in the port is high, and the port will do better the more ships it gets through in a day. And there's also the environmental impact of ships idling outside the port, waiting for their turn. If we can connect those ports to ships earlier on, and have a kind of single, integrated system which says, "These are my refueling requirements, this is what I've got on board that you're going to be able to take off the ship. These are the staff that you'll need, these people are coming back off," all of those things. If I can understand those, as a port, earlier, then I can be more efficient in taking the ships through the process, docking and everything that needs to happen while they're in the port. And so that saves me money. It makes the whole thing more efficient.
Sheera:
Yeah. Well, we can quite easily see that just the one topic of 5G and satellite communications, that's easily filtering through to a number of other industries. So, unfortunately, today we're going to have to leave it here for 5G and satcoms, but hopefully in the next podcast we can pick up on some of these topics. And all that remains is for me to say thanks, Jaime, and thanks, Andy, for your time. I've certainly learned something, and I hope you all have too.
