China launches world’s 1st satellite to test 6G architecture: State media

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ISTANBUL (AA) - China has launched into space the world’s first satellite "to test 6G architecture," state media reported on Monday.

The satellite was launched by the world’s largest telecom carrier China Mobile and has been successfully placed into a low orbit to “offer low latency and high data transfer rates.”

Blasted into space with a 5G satellite on Saturday, the satellite will “test 6G architecture" and uses “domestic software and hardware, supports in-orbit software reconstruction, flexible deployment of core network functions and automated management, enhancing the efficiency and reliability of the in-orbit operation of the satellite core network,” said China Mobile.

The autonomous 6G architecture was jointly developed by China Mobile and the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Placing such satellites at low-earth orbit, allows “greater telecom signal coverage in terrestrial mobile networks, providing higher bandwidth satellite internet services globally,” said the telecom giant.

Last October, Chinese scientists successfully tested a communication device in space that can "pass light signals from one location to another without converting them to electrical signals."

The test was conducted by a team at the Xian Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Known as “spaceborne optical switching technology,” it was sent into space by China’s Y7 carrier rocket last August.

Earlier in November 2020, China had sent into space “the world’s first 6G experiment satellite.”

The experimental 6G satellite was aimed to “verify the terahertz (THz) communication technology in space."