UK-based satellite 5G technology company AccelerComm says it has been granted its 56th international patent, adding to its intellectual property portfolio covering channel coding and physical layer acceleration for 5G non-terrestrial networks (NTN).
In a statement dated 14 April 2026, the company said the patent portfolio spans techniques including polar coding, LDPC coding, CRC acceleration, soft-decision demodulation, channel estimation and equalisation, as well as hardware acceleration architectures intended to support both terrestrial and satellite deployments. AccelerComm said its patents cover jurisdictions including the United Kingdom, United States, European Union, China, Canada and South Korea.
AccelerComm, founded at the University of Southampton in 2016, said its patents align with the 3GPP New Radio standardisation process, where it has contributed. The company said its technology is deployed in more than 200 commercial satellites and licensed by major silicon vendors.
“Every patent in our portfolio protects technology that has been proven not just in lab simulations, but in hardware and in orbit,” said David Helfgott, CEO of AccelerComm. “That combination of expertise, silicon integration, and flight heritage gives our customers – from chipset vendors to satellite prime contractors – a robust and defensible technical foundation as they build out next-generation non-terrestrial networks in space.”
The announcement comes as the telecommunications industry pushes towards tighter integration between terrestrial 5G networks and satellite-based connectivity, driven in part by new 3GPP NTN specifications and interest in direct-to-device and IoT use cases.
AccelerComm pointed to its participation in the Airbus UpNext SpaceRAN demonstrator, announced in January 2026, where it is contributing a 5G physical layer solution for on-board signal processing in software-defined satellites. The programme is exploring regenerative satellite architectures intended to enable 5G base station functionality in orbit, rather than relying solely on “bent pipe” relays.
The company also cited an expanded collaboration with Radisys in March 2026 to support both NB-IoT NTN and NR-NTN in a unified 3GPP-compliant platform.
AccelerComm said it closed a £13.1 million Series B funding round in June 2025 led by IP Group, with participation from IQ Capital, Swisscom Ventures, Bloc Ventures, Hostplus and Parkwalk Advisors, taking total funding raised to approximately $52.8 million.
“The accumulation of 56 granted patents reflects the commercialisation of more than a decade of research into channel coding and physical layer hardware acceleration,” said Professor Rob Maunder, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of AccelerComm. “These patents protect technology that is now operating on live satellite networks, inside 5G chipsets, and within the global standards that define how these systems interoperate. That is a strong validation of the approach we have taken from the outset.”
