Professor Barry Evans, Professor-Information Systems Engineering, University of Surrey
The convergence of satellite communications with terrestrial networks has taken a step forward with the emergence of Direct-To-Device (D2D) demonstrations in the form of Direct-To-Cell demonstrations. This new and disruptive service is likely to predominate in the 5G advanced era up to 2030. However there are many challenges to be solved in areas of standards and spectrum before it becomes a reality. The 6G era is upon us with first standards meetings in 3GPP commencing in 2025 and again NTN faces challenges in ensuring that it is not locked out by a unified standard that cannot cope with the mobility of large satellite constellations. The convergence of NTN and TN raises additional problems of how flexible we can make the 6G architecture to allow a range of different business models.