The aerospace giant Lockheed Martin is working with Sequans Communications to develop new LTE for satellite technologies.
The two companies are enabling LTE end user devices to connect directly to geostationary satellites in what they’re describing as a world-first achievement with wide application.
“Sequans has expertise adapting LTE technology for special purposes such as this one,” said Scott Landis, a director at Lockheed Martin, in a press release. “Sequans engineers modified their existing LTE chips to enable a new LTE-to-satellite communication specification developed by Lockheed Martin. LTE to satellite represents an important breakthrough in mobility and connectivity.”
The project with Lockheed Martin is the most recent one Sequans has undertaken as part of its Custom Technology Solutions initiative. In addition to satellite, Sequans has adapted its technology for projects in other markets, including aviation, transportation, public safety, and government.
“The work we are doing with Lockheed Martin to integrate LTE with satellite represents a significant evolution as we modify our LTE chips to take advantage of the huge satellite opportunity now developing for M2M and IoT applications,” said Sequans CEO Georges Karam in the release. “Enabling the LTE modem to speak to satellite networks as simply and as easily as possible will have a major impact on handling the huge potential volume of broadband and IoT applications that require space-based, ubiquitous communications, such as connected cars, shipping, and navigation.”
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Last month, Sequans announced that it’s working with STMicroelectronics to bring LTE for IoT connectivity to the MCU ecosystem and accelerate its adoption. The companies developed a dedicated cellular extension board for STM32 Discovery kits based on Sequans’ Monarch LTE-M/NB-IoT technology.
Ligado last year inked deals with Ericsson and Sequans to build equipment for the satellite component of its planned network. Ligado said the companies would build equipment for LTE-M and NB-IoT network technologies running in Ligado’s 40 MHz of nationwide spectrum between 1500 MHz and 1700 MHz, the so-called L-Band.