Nokia Bell Lab’s Thierry Klein says it’s what some might call a “space geek” – and although he never traveled into orbit, a planned mission with NASA to establish an LTE network on the moon brings him little closer.
4G LTE networks are well established here on Earth, but what does it take to translate cellular technology to lunar surface applications?
FierceWireless spoke with Klein, head of the Enterprise and Automation Research Laboratory at Nokia Bell Labs, to find out.
For starters, many tests are needed. When a cell site crashes or something doesn’t work properly on a terrestrial network, queue up for a technician or engineer crew to come up with a solution. On the moon, however, the aid is not really a truck roll (or even launching a rocket).
“You can never test enough,” Klein told Fierce.
It is lucky then that the last mission with NASA is not Nokia’s first foray into LTE every month. The Finnish seller was the technology partner for a previously privately funded project in 2018, with Vodafone and Audi to put LTE on the moon.
This mission never flew, but Nokia has already built an LTE system for this purpose. It configured configurations exactly like what it would use on the Moon, to test performance, range, efficiency and more. About 25 tests were performed in environmental rooms, according to Klein, for extreme conditions and stressors such as shock, vibration, vacuum, thermal and radiation.
The new project is part of NASA’s Artemis program, and Nokia won a $ 14.1 million prize for its winning “Tipping Point” proposal, which the space program requested to help develop technologies for operations. sustainable human resources on the lunar surface by 2030.
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Now, however, Nokia needs to integrate the equipment with a monthly lander developed by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, and development and testing are still to be done to align with the requirements for the specific mission – which, although similar, is, also unique.
“This is really the focus for us this year,” Klein said of development, integration and testing.
The launch target date has been in 2022 for some time. A location has not been completed for the mission, but it is aimed at the South Pole of the Moon for operation in a few weeks of daylight.
Drink me
So what does a monthly LTE network look like? Nokia’s plans start with optimized and enhanced equipment to withstand extreme conditions, from take-off to landing, to intense radiation once on the surface.
It’s about all the elements of a commercial network reduced to what essentially becomes an entire LTE network in one box, according to Klein.
“You have your radio, your baseband, your core, all your functionality built into one compact unit that will be deployed on the lunar lander,” Klein said, along with the antennas. He compared it to a small cell with an advanced packet integrated core (ePC).
The equivalent of the user’s equipment (UE) is fixed on the rover, also with its own antennas, to establish the connection from the monthly lander to the UE on the rover.
The antennas do not radiate from a typical tower height of 100 feet, but are fixed between 3 and 5 meters from the ground. This has a major impact on autonomy, Klein noted, and the project targets two scenarios.
One is short distances, sending the rover 300 to 400 meters away from the lander and a second longer distance target, where the rover would be 5 km away from the lander. It’s something Nokia believes is achievable based on experimental validation with the device, its power levels and its height, Klein said.
Together with the LTE system, Nokia provides operations maintenance software that connects back to the mission control to manage the management, maintenance, configuration, and remote control of the network itself.
The moon has its own unique terrain challenges, but one positive thing is that you won’t find any skyscrapers like you would in the center of a large metropolitan area.
“The lunar landscape is very different, with no obstacles, no buildings, no trees,” Klein said. “At the same time, you have valleys and craters and boulders, but it’s generally open ground, so you can help with the range.” And electromagnetic waves propagate even without an atmosphere.
Are you looking for a signal?
The purpose of the mission is not for astronauts to 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 communications from space to Earth using satellites or other technologies.
Cellular technologies are not used in space, Klein said. So, it would be the first time that the cell phone comes into play for surface communications or lunar space.
As an unmanned space mission, the main goal is to establish surface communications on the Moon – with data links between the lunar lander and a custom equivalent of an end-user device fixed on the rover. For this project, it primarily involves the transmission of HD data and video from the rover to the lander, as well as the remote control of the rover.
Nokia hopes to offer advanced capabilities such as transfer capability, latency, reliability and other features of 4G. In the future, access to information, machine interactions, voice and videos are part of the image, as astronauts enter lunar, Martian or other space missions.
“In the future, there will be manned missions so that astronauts can talk to each other, machines, sensors, devices and really have all their video applications, voice, biometric applications, telemetry, data collection of sensors that they can collect, as well as any automation and robotic control, ”Klein said.
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As NASA seeks to establish a lasting presence on the moon, a human element also comes into play and motivates Nokia.
“We use cellular technologies every day, and astronauts in their personal lives use these capabilities as well,” Klein said, adding that Nokia should have access to them as they perform missions, not just here on Earth.
Test, test
There are four key areas that Nokia needs to prepare to ensure that its equipment and software are robust enough.
The first is to make sure it survives launch and landing, Klein explained, with mechanical stressors such as shock, vibration and acceleration.
The second is to be able to operate in extreme environments, involving temperature ranges, operating in vacuum and radiation.
Radiation is one of the most unique space-related challenges, according to Klein.
The impact of radiation on software is that it could turn bits into code “and suddenly your code stops working.” The question becomes how to avoid it and heal from it. And not all hardware components are equally susceptible to radiation, he explained.
The third is reliability, as I mentioned earlier.
“There’s no way to send someone to change equipment here, so you need to be absolutely reliable, you need to have redundancy in both hardware and software, and you need to be able to remotely configure, restart, and manage your equipment.” , said Klein.
And the fourth is about size, weight and power. This means integrating as much as possible into a single form factor, according to Klein, and optimizing energy consumption so that dimensions and functions are reduced to just what is needed. But it is an act of balancing against the third point of reliability and robustness, he noted, with double redundancy on hardware.
While radiation may be unique to space, small footprints, energy consumption, and weight are also important for a terrestrial network.
“It’s not only interesting to put it in space, but we see that we will push the technology and development capabilities that will have applicability in terrestrial environments,” Klein said. “By doing this we will absolutely learn and optimize the networks and then bring those lessons back to earth and apply them in our commercial product for enterprise industrial applications.”
Imagine oil rigs or mines, where remote operation also applies alongside small form factors.
The team is looking forward to a successful mission, to validate performance, as well as to provide models so that it can design and size for potential future applications on a larger scale in space.
As for the staff for Klein and the team, he said the most interesting thing is that the technologies that Nokia Bell labs have built push them beyond the current limits.
“It’s just a very interesting opportunity to take something as much as you can, maybe literally,” Klein said.