How Cell Phones Communicate with Satellites

Podcast: The Innovation Attorney Podcast · The Innovation Attorney

Opublikowano: 2026-10-12

Cell phones communicate with satellites by sending ordinary LTE or 5G radio signals to a low Earth orbit base station licensed under FCC rules adopted March 15, 2024. The satellite carries a cellular base station and a phased array antenna that forms narrow beams on the ground. The network removes most of the delay and Doppler shift, and phones built to 3GPP Release 17 remove the rest by computing their own position from GNSS and reading satellite orbit data from the broadcast. A handset transmitting 200 milliwatts across a slant range of 1,247 kilometers faces about 160 decibels of free space path loss...