Originally published by Sun Yan of the IT TimesDomestic mobile phones have entered the satellite era
Written by IT Times reporter Sun Yan
Edited by Hao Junhui and Sun Yan
In September 2022, consumer-grade domestic mobile phones that can play satellite** are about to come out. A year later, on August 29, 2023, Huawei launched the Huawei Mate 60 Pro, a popular smartphone that supports satellite calling. In January 2023, a number of satellite communication industry experts** said that the end of 2023 to the beginning of 2024 will be the outbreak period of direct connection of mobile phones to satellites. A year later, the once impossible challenge came to life, and domestic mobile phones entered the satellite era.
At the beginning of 2024, Honor, OPPO, and Xiaomi will be "on the stars" one after another. "This year, mainstream mobile phone manufacturers such as Huawei, Honor, and Xiaomi will directly connect to Tiantong Satellite and successively launch 4 or 5 satellite communication public mobile phones. China Telecom Satellite Corporation, the exclusive operator of Tiantong Satellite, cautiously estimated.
In 2024
Satellite communication has become standard for flagship mobile phones
The Huawei Mate 60 Pro has been on sale for 5 months and is still on sale.
Source: Oriental IC
In addition, the mainstream mobile phone for satellite communication that has been released is the Honor Magic 6, which is equipped with a mobile phone directly connected to the satellite solution - Honor Hongyan Communication. OPPO officially announced that the Find X7 Ultra satellite communication version will be released at the end of March this year. Xiaomi's first 5G satellite mobile terminal has been connected to the network, and a Xiaomi satellite mobile terminal with a model of 2311BPN23C has passed the network access license for telecommunications equipment.
At present, there is no definite release of satellite communication news is vivo, industry rumors, vivo is still testing satellite communication mobile phones, speculation will be carried on the high-end version of vivo X100 satellite communication function. At the MWC Shanghai exhibition held in July 2023, the vivo satellite communication tester appeared at UNISOC booth, equipped with UNISOC SOC chip V8821, the first satellite communication SOC chip of UNISOC in the field, which tested satellite communication functions such as data transmission, short message, location sharing and calling.
Vivo and Huawei's satellite communication technology is different. Industry insiders told the "IT Times" reporter that each mobile phone manufacturer is tackling its own problems, aiming to develop differentiated satellite communication functions, for example, OPPO Find X7 Ultra will provide handsets and hands-free dual-mode satellite calls, break through the walkie-talkie mode, and return to the posture of answering ordinary**.
Two years
Glorious Satellite Breakout Battle
In January 2024, Honor officially released the Magic 6, which solves the antenna performance problem with the help of the self-developed RF enhancement chip Honor C1+, reducing the overall area of the satellite chip by about 40% and the standby power consumption by 50% after connecting to the satellite. The Honor Magic 6 Pro can still support 8 minutes of real-time satellite voice or send 16 two-way satellite text messages in 5% ultra-low power scenarios.
Honor is the first mainstream domestic mobile phone manufacturer to release satellite communications after Huawei.
We have carried out 15,900 kilometers of special tests, covering many cities and border areas across the country. At the Digital Technology Ecology Conference in November 2023, HONOR reviewed the process of in-depth cooperation with China Telecom in the past two years to jointly overcome the three major technical problems of direct connection of mobile phones to satellites.
After two years of exploration, Honor uses self-developed antenna design and software and hardware collaboration to improve the performance of the antenna, with the goal of achieving the antenna performance of professional satellites on ordinary mobile phones; The second difficulty is power consumption and heat dissipation, Honor found in the initial solution evaluation that the power consumption of satellite network calls is more than 4 times that of ordinary cellular networks, and the high power consumption also leads to serious heating, so you have to limit the call duration, and you can't use satellite calls in a low power state; The third difficulty is chip miniaturization, the area of satellite chips and peripheral circuit boards is twice that of Bluetooth and wifi communication subsystems, and Honor has reduced the area of the chip motherboard by 30% at that time.
Three years
Satellite chip shipments may exceed 50 million
In less than two months, the size of the satellite chip has shrunk by another 10%, how did Honor do it?
Zhao Ming, CEO of Honor, revealed at the press conference that Honor chose to work with domestic partners to rebuild the solution of the chip system, so that the satellite communication technology has the ability of miniaturization and low-power processing.
According to Lei Feng and many other ** reports, the main IC supplier of Honor Satellite Communication is Zhongke Jingshang, and other mobile phone manufacturers may follow up with the same satellite communication solution.
Tianyancha shows that the full name of Zhongke Jingshang is Beijing Zhongke Jingshang Technology Co., Ltd. *** by the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences 3057% of the shares are actually controlled.
It is expected that the shadow of glory can be seen in the satellite communication solutions of other manufacturers. Zhao Ming repeatedly emphasized at the press conference that after full verification on the mobile phone, Honor will also share its satellite communication technology with the entire industry, and it is expected to be open to more manufacturers in a few months.
"For satellite chip companies, it is a big benefit, before the mobile phone is directly connected to the satellite, the satellite chip is in the hands of traditional manufacturers such as China Electronics Technology Group Corporation and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the demand is also very small. According to Hu Hui (pseudonym), a person in the satellite communication circle, with the direct connection of the two major consumer markets of mobile phones and automobiles to satellites, the satellite chip industry has been brought to the fire.
Previously, according to an investigation by a reporter from the "IT Times", the satellite chips of Huawei's Mate 60 Pro series were customized by the research institute under CETC and Huali Chuangtong, accounting for about 7:3. With the shipments of Huawei's Mate 60 Pro series rising again and again, the stock prices of these two satellite chip manufacturers and their affiliates have risen.
According to the "China Telecom 5G NTN Technology***" released in November 2023, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology estimates that NTN (non-terrestrial network) chip shipments are expected to exceed 50 million pieces within three yearsA large number of ordinary mobile phone users will greatly reduce the cost of satellite chips, terminal modules, and mobile phones, making it economically feasible for mobile phones to directly connect to satellites.
In addition to the direct connection of mobile phones to satellites, direct connection of cars to satellites has also become a major trend. According to China Telecom**, by 2025, the sales of directly connected satellite cars will exceed 1 million units, and the sales of directly connected satellite mobile phone terminals will exceed 20 million units.
Industry insiders believe that the evolution trend of satellite communications, whether it is mobile phones or automobiles, will expand from high-end to low-end, with the development of satellite communications in the civilian market, will further reduce the related costs, so that every ordinary user can afford to "never lose contact" satellite communications.
Three levels
China Telecom's mobile phone direct satellite program
As we all know, domestic mobile phone manufacturers can't avoid Tiantong Satellite if they want to launch mobile phone direct connection satellites, and its exclusive operator is China Telecom. Tiantong satellite is a high-orbit satellite, located 360,000 kilometers, at present, the three Tiantong satellites can basically meet the needs of satellite communication in China.
In November 2023, at the China Telecom Digital Technology Ecology Conference, China Telecom Satellite announced that in addition to in-depth cooperation with Huawei, it is also actively exploring in-depth cooperation with domestic mainstream mobile phone manufacturers such as Honor, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, ZTE, and Meizu, and strives to launch more flagship mobile phones that can be directly connected to satellites in 2024. Shao Yantao, deputy general manager of China Telecom's marketing department, said that in 2024, the group's centralized procurement of flagship models of directly connected satellites will exceed 5 million units.
China Telecom's mobile phone direct satellite plan dates back to 2021.
In May of this year, in the Gansu ** Mountain Marathon, more than 20 runners were killed due to sudden weather changes. In late July 2021, heavy rains in Henan paralyzed the local communication system. An idea began to haunt Yang Lingcai, general manager of China Telecom Satellite Company: if every ordinary mobile phone could be directly connected to the satellite, then everyone could call for help at a critical moment.
A meeting on the direct connection of mobile phones to satellites quietly unfolded in the office of China Telecom Satellite Company, and on this day, the meeting was held for a long time, and all the technical experts in the industry at that time thought: "This cannot be done, and the technology and cost are very difficult." ”
In October 2021, China Telecom Satellite Corporation began technical feasibility demonstration and experiments. In the first half of 2022, China Telecom Satellite Corporation achieved one card and two networks, allowing users to access both the terrestrial cellular network and the satellite network without changing cards or numbers.
At the same time, China Telecom, together with mobile phone terminal manufacturers and other industry chain partners, began to overcome two other difficulties.
The second level is to give the chip "** In the past, the size of the satellite chip was equivalent to the watch dial, but the mobile phone motherboard was "every inch of land", and there was not much space left for the satellite chip, and how to integrate it into half a fingernail was a great challenge.
The third level is how to implant the antenna into the mobile phone, the satellite mobile phone relies on "pigtails" with far in 3For satellite connections 60,000 kilometers away, the initial scheme tends to be simple, such as making the mobile phone antenna into a mobile phone chain, hanging it on the mobile phone, and screwing it on when it is used, but the user experience of this scheme is not friendly. Even if the antenna is implanted in the mobile phone, the gain of the antenna cannot meet the industry standard, and the satellite signal cannot be stably received, and the satellite network side also needs to be transformed.
Since then, experts from China Telecom Satellite Company have thought of two ways to increase gain, one is to increase the signal power, and the other is to reduce the information rate, just like when two people are far away, either raise their voices and shout, or speak slower, so that the other party can hear more clearly.
After all the technical hurdles were passed, it had to go through the live network test, and the team of China Telecom Satellite Company spent 15 months traveling to Lop Nur, Qiangtang, Sanya, Mohe and other areas where the terrestrial network coverage is more difficult, testing two-way voice calls and SMS sending and receiving. It is often a month or two to walk, and the journey is 20,000 kilometers.
On September 8, 2023, China Telecom's mobile phone direct satellite service was launched, and in just a few months, China Telecom's Tiantong satellite users have doubled.
Four months later, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have released new mass mobile phones directly connected to satellites, truly opening the satellite era.