Samsung Proposes "Space Internet"

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Samsung proposes a means to provide the world with an additional zetabyte of data transfer capacity every month-- a "Space Internet" system consisting of 4600 tiny Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites.

Space InternetIn a paper titled "Mobile Internet from the Heavens," Samsung R&D president Farooq Khan forecasts global demand for mobile demand will reach 1 zettabyte per month by 2028, and as such companies need to gear up now if they want to provide the bandwidth required.

Enter the Space Internet. The system consists of a network of so-called micro satellites (weighting less than 500kg) at 1500-2000km altitude. Such satellites cost relatively less to manufacture and deploy, and can essentially blanket the world with faster mobile internet (providing 200GB/month for 5 billion users worldwide) following the widespread adoption of 5G technology.

"With the 5G vision of providing wireless access in the millimeter wave spectrum, a single standard-based wireless technology can be developed for access, backhaul and satellite communications, eliminating fragmentation and thereby reducing costs of providing wireless services," Khan says.

Such a system pushes also signals at faster speeds, with latency of around 0.02 seconds.

However Space Internet comes with a catch-- it depends on a number of technology still being developed, such as radio frequency circuits able to effectively handle millimetre-wave frequencies.

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