China has made a satellite to ground station transmission speed breakthrough after successfully conducting its first 100Gbps ultra-high-speed satellite-to-ground laser transmission test for high-resolution remote sensing imagery.
The Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co., Ltd carried out the 6G-tech test. The result is a ten-fold improvement on tests carried out by the same company just one year ago and bests the speeds Starlink offers. The result was described as the “equivalent to transmitting ten full-length movies in just one second.”
Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co owns Jilin-1, the world’s largest sub-metre commercial remote sensing satellite constellation. They carried out the test in late December using a ground station fixed to a truck and one of the 117 satellites in the Jilin-1 constellation.
“Musk’s Starlink has revealed its laser inter-satellite communication system but hasn’t deployed its laser satellite to ground communication yet,” Chang Guang’s Wang Hanghang told the South China Morning Post.
“We plan to deploy these laser communication units across all satellites in the Jilin-1 constellation to improve their efficiency, with the goal of networking 300 satellites by 2027.”
A speed edge over Starlink
Starlink satellite-to-ground station speeds vary depending on several factors, including location, time of day, and network usage. Download speeds typically vary between 25 and 220 Mbps, with most users experiencing speeds over 100 Mbps
Hanghang, who the company’s head of laser communication ground station technologies, said that compared to existing remote sensing satellites, the data volume generated by ultra-high-resolution satellites will increase by several multiples.
The commercial remote sensing company has ties to the People’s Liberation Army , the Chinese Government, and the Chinese Communist Party.
In 2020, in response to growing data bottlenecks using traditional satellite-to-ground station transmission methods, Chang Guang Company decided to focus on laser communication technologies. Aside from the speed advantages, the company says laser technologies offer obvious cost advantages.
Hanghang says fast data relay capabilities will better serve disaster monitoring, national defence, smart cities, environmental protection, emergency response, and other sectors.
Among other things, the satellite to ground station transmission speed breakthrough is likely to significantly improve China’s space capabilities.
Switching to laser technologies to avoid traditional bottlenecks
In 2020, in response to growing data bottlenecks using traditional satellite-to-ground station transmission methods, Chang Guang Company decided to focus on laser communication technologies. Aside from the speed advantages, the company says laser technologies offer obvious cost advantages.
Chang Guang isn’t the first entity to achieve 100Gbps. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NASA’s TereByte InfraRed Delivery System have done so. But Hanghang says his company achieved its result without relying on an observatory, merely a receiving unit on the back of a truck. He says this makes it a mobile 6G solution and offers a clear competitive advantage.
While Chang Guang is receiving plenty of praise for its test result and beating Elon Musk at something always makes for an easy headline, industry observers point out that China is unlikely to make this technology available to everyday users anytime soon, instead reserving it for state-backed military and space endeavours.
The observers say Musk’s willingness to commercialise his satellite technologies and make it available to anyone prepared to pay the subscription costs will continue to give Starlink the edge in terms of popularity and revenues.
In the meantime, Chang Guang will continue to send more communication satellites into orbit with the aim of more than doubling the current numbers within three years.
