Forsway, a leading provider of innovative solutions tapping satellite and existing terrestrial technologies to enable cost-efficient broadband services, on Tuesday announced Phase II of its Satellite Assisted 5G for vehicles with European Space Agency to develop a complete hybrid satellite hub for connected vehicles.
Using the benchmark 'network-of-networks', Cloud-Native approach, a main aspect of the project is the integration of Forsway Xtend Hub with the 5G/NFV architecture (Network Function Virtualization). The forward-leaning initiative aims at enabling operators and service providers to reach underserved areas not well covered by terrestrial mobile network infrastructure with satellite broadband - toserve the rapidly expanding connected vehicles segment with a complete hybrid solution for land-mobile (buses/trains), maritime, and in-flight connectivity with seamless connectivity.
Forsway sees the network-of-networks approach in 5G as a perfect means of using satellites to reach underserved areas not well covered by mobile broadband.The company predicts that satellites will play an important role when providing continuous connectivity to vehicles and that the network-of-networks approach in the 5G architecture provides robust flexibility to extend mobile networks using satellite connectivity.
Main Forsway development in the Phase II ESA co-funded project will concentrate on:
- Advanced SD-WAN: Including the option to utilize several heterogeneous network links in parallel, with automatic bonding, failover, and application-aware traffic prioritization.
- Edge computing: Using satellite multicast for distribution of computing workloads and content will be valuable, for example, in passenger entertainment and distance education.
Edvin Lindqvist, Forsway’s CTO
The integration of the Forsway Xtend Hub into the 5G/NFV architecture will create an exciting, future-oriented platform for 5G initiatives outside our traditional customer base. To supplement the hub, Forsway will also develop a hybrid satellite/terrestrial terminal to deploy validation trials.
