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Objectives
ENTECO addressed the vital need to close the technology gap between US mega-constellations and offerings from the European Space Industry. ENTECO-supported Thales Alenia Space (TAS) in advancing product maturity to meet commercial satellite constellation requirements. The goal was to minimise reliance on US-built payload units and reduce US-sourced critical components by advancing mixed US/EU solutions. This initiative combined a global system approach to define key constellation parameters, state-of-the-art hardware technology investigation and derisking, and collaborative co-design among system, payload, hardware, and software teams. This integration prevented oversizing in mass, consumption, and cost, ensuring hardware dimensions aligned with software and system-level demands.
Benefits
Low Earth orbit (LEO) and medium Earth orbit (MEO) constellations use some common technologies with GEO satellites, however, to be industrialised, constellations need hyper-optimised products in terms of performance, consumption, cost and capacity. Thus, the solutions implementation for LEO/MEO constellations may be very different from geostationary ones.
The maturity improvement on these hyper-integrated and optimised solutions is mandatory, it requires an important and dedicated investment, especially on antenna and processor units, which are usually on the critical path of such constellations programme schedules.
The broadband constellations programs were also considered as a strategic stake at European level and lead to the currently on-going IRIS² programme.
ENTECO was aiming at closing some technological gaps between United States mega-constellations and current European space industry state-of-the-art, while targeting an increased technological European sovereignty.
The development schedule requested on several commercial bids lead to the need to start, as soon as possible, with the ENTECO project for ESA, derisking activities during a short stage to progress on design maturity and development schedule. It was then pursued by a second step in the frame of the European constellation IRIS².
Features
The foreseen satellites of the space telecom infrastructure are based on a regenerative payload on-boarding some network functions and enabling compliance with the 3GPP 5G NTN standard (Release 19). Their hardware and software products definition shall thus be driven by an end-to-end system approach.
Challenges
- Address some key design trade-offs at system and sub-system levels (OBP, OBTSW, AA) in support to architectures and preliminary product designs definition;
- Define strategies and to plan further development phases;
- Derisk, by verification and measurements, some architecture concepts with Proof of Concepts and product breadboards;
- Derisk some new technologies and new components use by testing and assessments;
- Issue preliminary specifications to frame further development activities and procurements.
System Architecture
The considered system complies with main Very High Throughput Satellites (VHTS) concepts, comprising multi-gateway capabilities and including the support of gateway diversity.
It’s also designed as a shared infrastructure, which not only means compatibility with multiple types of services and types of user equipment, but also implies that:
- The system design supports multiple types of satellites in LEO or MEO orbits,
- Multiple satellite providers or satellite network operators (SNO) can provide, and/or manage sub-parts of the infrastructure,
- The footprint of the system spans over multiple world regions, including a continuous world-wide coverage,
- Multiple service operators and/or multiple networks operators – possibly with multiple Core Networks interconnected – can provide their services over the space infrastructure.
5G Network Slicing implementation help to address those needs.
Within the Satellite RAN, sharing capabilities where 5G components and/or 5G functions (such as gNB) are mutualised.
Finally, the adoption of O-RAN architecture in NTN RAN components allows to keep orchestration and management as open as possible to avoid risks of vendor lock-in for system evolution.
Plan
The ENTECO Project was including two ARTES C&G Phases:
- Definition phase for Telecom System level activities
- Product phase for payload units building blocks first derisking activities (OBP, RFFE, DBFN and OBTSW)
The Project’s duration was about 20 months from April 2024 to December 2025 with five milestones, each one leading to a formal Review with ESA and validating some specific objectives:
- Kick-Off Meeting
- Prior Work Review: the contract was signed in July 2024 with a four-month phase of prior work on active antenna, radio frequency (RF) front-ends, technological building blocks and EPC;
- Key Point Review: presentation of initial system configuration and payload building blocks preliminary architectures and trade-offs;
- Intermediate Review: consolidation of the system solution baseline with its feasibility assessment, presentation of payload building blocks derisking status;
- Final Review: summary of the activity’s outcomes with conclusions and recommendations.
Current Status
This activity has been completed.
