Description
Priority 2 activities will only be initiated on the explicit request ofat least one delegation.
Objective:
To demonstrate Machine-to Machine (M2M) services in two representative scenarios based on existing space assets (one in GEO and one in LEO orbit) utilizing existing satellite ground segment technologies developed for cost-effective and bandwidth efficient uncoordinated satellite access networks. Additionally, to analyse and study the applicability of existing and emerging air interfaces, as currently developed and used in the terrestrial sector; to study and implement the necessary modifications/adaptations in the demonstrator for a trial over satellite. The goal is to reuse existing hardware and air interfaces, hopefully enabling satcom solutions that are highly cost effective and present an opportunity for new product and service generation based on compact, low profile, and power efficient user terminals with low maintenance and low installation costs.
Targeted Improvements:
The targeted improvements are to take the level of maturity of satellite M2M technologies from laboratory to live demonstration over satellite and provide consolidated end-to-end solutions targeting a variety of M2M services. The activity will provide proof of concepts to the key players in the M2M market by demonstrating the feasibility of M2M services via satellite and the cost-effectiveness of global satellite access networks for M2M applications.
Description:
In recent years there has been a steady progress in developing techniques and technologies (as proprietary or open standards) that allow for uncoordinated system access of a large number of user terminals by taking advantage of contention resolution capabilities at the receiver. Such techniques rely on signal processing techniques such as successive interference cancellation at the gateway that can achieve 2-3 order of magnitudes improvement in throughput at low packet loss ratio compared to conventional ALOHA solutions. Among many solutions, the Enhanced Spread-Spectrum ALOHA (E-SSA) is considered a promising solution in terms of performance (throughput, power/energy efficiency, flexibility etc.) and is adopted as an open standard (S-MIM and its evolutions to other frequency bands). There are also proprietary solutions that are currently adopted for terrestrial wireless M2M applications that may be applicable also to satellite systems. Existing validation platforms will be complemented for live satellite tests.
A representative user terminal prototype will be selected or developed for the test campaign. Two complementary space assets, one in GEO orbit and one in LEO, will be identified for the test. In order to assess the effectiveness ofthe proposed techniques, in addition to a small number of representative user terminals, additional background traffic will be generated and transmitted using a terminal population emulator. The end-to-end test will include representative M2M traffic (e.g. modelling smart metering applications, financial transactions, etc.). The performance of each test scenario will be compared against laboratory test results according to a set of predefined figures of merit (e.g. link dimensioning validation, throughput, delay, packet reception success rate). The activity will provide a realistic assessment of the M2M technologies (and different types of air interfaces) that have been available for some time in a pre-operational state. It also allows to show the use of existing space assets to deliver realistic M2M services.
The activity shall:
- Define operational scenarios, system architectures, and representative use cases for M2M satellite services for the live demonstrations. Identify the space assets, ground segment components and validation plan.
- Carry out modifications, delta developments of the M2M terminal prototypes to be used for the validation campaign. Identify methods to represent population of terminals (background traffic).
- Carry out test campaigns, comparative performance analyses and demonstration of the M2M services using the end-to-end systems.
- Record the validation results, disseminate project findings and promote commercial deployments by planning pilot services.