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Professor Ning Wang
JOINER doesn’t have any of its own “white-box” satellites for research experiments (not yet, at least). So instead, we’ve developed a facility to provide as close to the real thing as you can get without launching into space. And JOINER’s Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) Emulation Facility is about as close to space as you can get without rocket fuel.
Like spectrum sharing and AI, NTN is an essential area of future network research. JOINER’s NTN Facility is a unique offering both to academia and to our industry partners, and provides a launchpad for the UK’s NTN capabilities.
The facility comprises two specific emulation platforms adapted for NTN trials.
First, is the emulation platform offered by Keysight: an existing and popular precision test instrument for commercial networks. JOINER is providing academic partners access to the tool, and, crucially, is following strict 3GPP specifications in doing so — ensuring that outputs dovetail with our efforts to shape future standards (another key strand within the JOINER project).
While Keysight may currently lack the scale needed to mimic large-scale constellations, for instance, and the programmability openness that JOINER strives for, it can be used in conjunction with the NTN Facility’s second emulation platform to achieve those conditions.
That second platform is built on Calnex’s NE-ONE Professional emulator. NE-ONE offers a high degree of programmability, and the opportunity to operate at the wider scale that JOINER is working at. And while NE-ONE is not technically an NTN specific tool, we’ve been able to import channels and customise it as such for JOINER’s purposes.
Both of these emulation platforms can also be integrated with JOINER’s core network and the wider network as a whole, making it possible to run NTN experiments alongside the other elements that sit within JOINER.
Why focus on NTN?
We believe that, as well as supporting existing use cases — for people and businesses in rural areas, and for moving entities like trains or cruise ships, for instance — NTN will be a crucial component of 6G networking, and beyond, for the sake of ubiquitous connectivity with assured service quality.
Future networks, including 6G, are not going to be defined solely by their faster or more consistent connectivity, but also by the services that will be built on top of that connectivity. In this vein, we begin to think of NTN satellites not just as conduits for transporting data, but as an option for storing and processing it too. The ability to connect devices directly to satellite NTN coverage will also produce new use cases and applications.
Recent threats to terrestrial cables, and the impact that natural disasters — or just plain old everyday work disasters — can have on our networks and the services that depend on them have only emphasised the importance of network resilience to the stability of everyday life. Knowing that it’s possible to shift load to NTN — and not solely rely on cables in the ground — can share the load required to provide that stability.
We are constantly breaking new ground in this space. Use cases involving end-to-end orchestration, and using AI-driven intelligence for traffic steering between NTN and terrestrial networks (for enhanced resilience) are currently in development.
Pushing on to new frontiers
As the capabilities of the NTN Facility grow, we keep an eye keenly trained on the future of what we can offer.
Ultimately, we hope to move from emulation to real-world NTN testing. This, of course, requires satellites. And we have received encouraging communications from both public and private sector organisations who are interested in bringing their satellites into the existing JOINER network.
For me, this is where our ambitions must take us: not just across terrestrial national borders, but into new stratospheres. Pushing the UK’s networking expertise to undiscovered frontiers.