Satellites — a base station in orbit — the cheat sheet

The shape of it

1 What it is and why it was wanted

2 Who built it, and where to look

1.4 A base station in orbit
A satellite access node is the base station of this world, and it is not only the thing in orbit. Its own definition puts the payload in space and the gateway and base-station functions on the ground inside one named node.
2.1 Why anyone wanted a phone to talk to orbit
The reason on the record is coverage where there is none, and the first industries named are transport and logistics. Not speed, not capacity, not a new service: somewhere a mast cannot go.
3.3 Who is building it, and where the weight sits
RAN4 carries more of this subject than any other group in the local record. Radio requirements and band-by-band work are what make a group's pile grow, and RAN4 owns both.
4.2 What exists on paper, and where to look yourself
Seven numbers get you started: TS 38.108 and TS 38.181 for the satellite base station, TS 38.101-5 for the phone, TS 36.108 for the older sensor radio, TR 38.811 and TR 38.821 for the studies, and TS 22.261 for what the system owes its users.

1.10 A base station in orbit
"Satellite" does not mean the base station is in orbit. The satellite access node is defined around a transparent payload — one that only shifts, filters and amplifies — with the gateway and base-station functions on the ground. Only a regenerative payload, which demodulates and decodes, puts part of the base station up there.
2.7 Why anyone wanted a phone to talk to orbit
A justification is an argument, not a status. The words "commercial deployment are ongoing" are the proposers' reason for asking for more work — the work plan holds no field that says a piece of work is running, stopped or finished, and nothing in this record confirms that any network was ever switched on.
3.8 Who is building it, and where the weight sits
A filer count is a count of spellings, not of companies. The name is taken exactly as each document wrote it and nothing is resolved to a parent company, so one organisation writing itself two ways appears twice and one that renamed itself appears twice as well. Read every one of these figures as "documents filed under this spelling".
4.5 What exists on paper, and where to look yourself
A version number and an upload day are not a release date. A file going up on the server on a given day says when that file appeared, not when the work was approved, published or finished — and the record holds no date on which any 3GPP release froze. Anybody offering you one from this data is guessing.

Every one was counted out of a file on this machine. Hover a row to read the question that produced it.

The 48 named sources it cites, by what they are.

Quoted wording 21

Wg 11

Specification 8

Meeting 4

Work item 3

Meeting document 1

The same subject, overview — Enough to follow the conversation and know what to look up.
The same subject, in depth — The working reference: every mechanism, every parameter.
Every question of this course — 16 of them, on one page.
The final test — 10 questions, 70 per cent to pass.
Every source behind the course — 680 of them, each with its method.