Satellite Channel Modeling for 5G Wireless Device Testing

Recent developments in 3GPP have introduced a satellite component to traditional terrestrial cellular 5G systems. The purpose of non-terrestrial network (NTN) access is to provide coverage to remote areas that are otherwise unreachable with a cellular network, especially in mission-critical environments. Standard land mobile communications have been tested against realistic propagation conditions for years; they are a fundamental design criterion of any wireless system and non-terrestrial networks are no exception.

In this webinar we summarize the 3GPP specification TR38.811 entitled, “Study on New Radio (NR) to support non-terrestrial networks,” which details channel models used for large-scale parameters such as shadowing, outdoor-to-indoor (O2I) loss, clutter loss, path loss, and small-scale parameters specific to satellite applications. We also discuss the key features of a radio channel emulator that enables effective 5G NTN testing to address the new set of challenges for satellite transceiver performance.