OQ Technology Secures ESA Contract for Advanced 5G NTN Beamforming
OQ Technology has announced that it has been selected by the European Space Agency under its ARTES programme to lead a new project focused on bringing terrestrial 5G beamforming technologies into satellite communications.
The €1 million BEAMSAT-5G initiative, which began in February 2026, will see OQ Technology act as prime contractor to develop and validate beamforming approaches tailored for non-terrestrial networks (NTN). The project centres on adapting terrestrial 5G innovations to meet the more demanding requirements of satellite systems, including link budgets, environmental constraints and reliability.
Beamforming is a key enabler for next-generation direct-to-device (D2D) services, allowing satellites to dynamically direct capacity where it is needed. For OQ Technology, the work aligns directly with its roadmap to deploy higher-capacity satellites equipped with multi-beam phased array antennas, supporting direct-to-smartphone connectivity.
The company is already progressing its first-generation D2D satellites, designed to enable two-way messaging and voice services, building on earlier demonstrations of direct emergency broadcast messaging to unmodified smartphones from low Earth orbit.
The BEAMSAT-5G project reflects a broader shift across the NTN ecosystem:
Technology convergence: Terrestrial 5G (and future 6G) features such as beamforming are increasingly being adapted for space-based networks
Capacity scaling: Advanced antenna technologies are becoming critical to support higher throughput and more users in D2D scenarios
Standards alignment: Continued focus on 3GPP-based approaches to ensure interoperability between terrestrial and satellite networks
By focusing on beamforming, the project targets one of the key technical challenges in scaling NTN from early messaging services toward higher-capacity data and voice offerings.