(Credit: Lynk)
The company Lynk announced that it was the first in the world to establish two-way communication between an ordinary mobile phone and a satellite.
In the future, the company wants to deploy a global satellite network providing communications in remote locations without ground towers without the need for a satellite phone.
Mobile communications are considered almost ubiquitous, but in fact, most of the Earth's surface is not covered by the signals from cell towers.
Moreover, we are talking about both remote parts of the land, where, if necessary, you can deploy network infrastructure
However, in the oceans, the construction of communication towers is practically impossible and impractical.
These places cannot be called completely cut off from communications.
There are satellite operators, such as Iridium, Inmarsat and Globalstar, which provide access to mobile communications or the Internet.
But to work with them, you need to buy large satellite phones.
In recent years, engineers have begun working on ways to connect conventional smartphones to satellites, especially with the advent of 5G beamforming modems.
In 2020, Lynk announced that it was the first to send a text message from a satellite to a regular mobile phone without hardware modifications
And now, the company has said that it has been successfully testing two-way communication for some time.
During the tests, which took place in the United States, Great Britain and the Bahamas, specialists connected several hundred mobile phones to the satellite.
To telephones on Earth, satellite signals look like signals from a conventional communications tower.
To do this, engineers have developed methods to compensate for the Doppler shift that occurs due to the rapid movement of the satellite in orbit.
To connect devices, it sends signals to the Earth on the broadcast control channel.
Devices on Earth receive this signal and send a connection request, after which the satellite checks the presence of a subscriber in the base and makes a decision.
So far, the company has launched five satellites, and, apparently, only the last one, launched in the summer, took part in the tests.
With one satellite operating, communication is available only for a few minutes a day and only in certain regions of the Earth.
But by 2023, Lynk plans to launch about 100 satellites, which will allow it to exchange data with the devices every few minutes.
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