The Iridium Network

The Iridium® network’s combination of reliability, low latency and global coverage are key strengths in this respect. Iridium’s network has an architecture that is unlike any other in the world. Positioned in low Earth orbit (LEO), Iridium’s 66 cross-linked satellites are only 780 kilometers from the Earth, providing low latency communications to hundreds of thousands of devices every day. It’s the only network that provides 100 percent truly global coverage – even in polar regions. Its satellites are fully cross-linked in an overlapping mesh architecture that provides higher reliability and redundancy making it well suited for pervasive connectivity.  

The crosslinks between the satellites enable each satellite to communicate with up to four other satellites in space, two in the same orbital plane and two in adjacent planes. Traffic is generally routed automatically between satellites, which minimizes the ground infrastructure necessary to support the constellation.

This architecture means that each satellite provides a moving coverage area roughly 2,500 kilometers in diameter on the surface of Earth at any given time, and it takes just minutes for a satellite to cross horizon to horizon, with an adjacent satellite coming into view and overlapping that same area no more than six minutes after the preceding one started that path. Because the satellites are constantly orbiting the Earth, antennae do not need to be pointed in a precise direction for connection but simply toward the open sky. This flexibility provides a great backbone for all kinds of use cases.

Looking forward

Moving forward, we will continue to innovate new communications services through our next generation satellite constellation, Iridium NEXT. Iridium NEXT will enable increased capacity, advanced data speeds, powerful new services and enhanced device capabilities to further our vision for the future of global communications. It will also enable satellite M2M to evolve to more closely resemble cellular IP-based services. The decreasing size and increasing affordability of our satellite transceivers has and will continue to increase access to manufacturers and solutions providers to add satellite connectivity to existing cellular-based offerings, and to further expand the use cases for M2M.  Iridium NEXT will be backward compatible, meaning customers and partners will retain the ability to use their existing Iridium devices to access the network, allowing them to build their M2M solutions today, and rely on our constellation for years to come.

One of the most exciting things that Iridium NEXT will enable is Iridium CertusSM broadband, a mobile satellite broadband service delivering versatile, enterprise-grade, reliable communications. It is expected to meet the connectivity needs of the many and vastly different markets that Iridium serves.

This provides an exciting opportunity for companies in markets including aviation, maritime and terrestrial to design and develop their own products to deliver critical and reliable communications for people and companies everywhere.   

As we move toward the launch of Iridium NEXT, we’re looking forward to continuing to provide our partners and customers with the most robust and far-reaching communications network in the world, and continuing to innovate and develop new technologies for their benefit.