AP Satellite Begins Development of 6G Communication Technology... "To Be Used in UAM Market"

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunseok Yoo] AP Satellite announced on the 25th that it has been selected for the Ministry of Science and ICT’s projects for developing a modem for satellite communication terminals based on 3GPP non-terrestrial standards for 5G core technology, as well as for the development of 3D spatial satellite communication technology and 3D spatial mobile communication technology for 6G core technology.

The development period for the 5G technology project led by AP Satellite is until December 2023. The 6G-related development, led by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) with AP Satellite as a joint participant, is scheduled until December 2025. The terminals developed by AP Satellite will interoperate with the 6G network over 2024 and 2025.

Through research and development, AP Satellite aims to overcome the limitations of the current 5G technology, which is centered on terrestrial mobile communication, and develop a modem for integrated terminals capable of realizing converged mobile and satellite communication technologies to provide Gbps-level services anywhere on Earth within an altitude of 10 km over three years. Based on this, they will expand and optimize to develop integrated terminals that interoperate with satellite and mobile communications for the 6G 3D spatial network. The 6G 3D spatial network ultimately seeks to implement 3D spatial mobile communication technology that provides Gbps-level mobile broadband services to various aerial mobile entities such as flying car taxis (UAM), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), drones, and aircraft within 10 km, targeting the rapidly growing autonomous driving service market.

The Ministry of Science and ICT announced the ‘10-Year Roadmap for Innovation and Growth in Unmanned Mobility Technology’ in December 2019, aiming to invest approximately 550 billion KRW over about 10 years to develop unmanned aircraft for commuting purposes. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced the ‘Korean Urban Air Mobility (K-UAM) Roadmap’ in June 2020, planning to conduct UAM flight demonstrations in 2024 and start UAM pilot projects in 2025, with full commercialization targeted from 2030.

A company official stated, “This research and development aims to connect terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks in 3D space, overcome the low-latency link limitations to achieve a latency of 10 ms, and provide Gbps-level video services to various aerial mobile entities in a 3D spatial mobile cell environment with significant interference, targeting a transmission speed of up to 1 Gbps.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.