First look at Project
Kuiper’s low-cost customer terminals
March 14, 2023
Project Kuiper is Amazon’s
low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite network. Its
mission is to bridge the digital divide by
providing fast, affordable broadband to
communities unserved or underserved by
traditional communications technologies.
To use the service,
customers will install an outdoor antenna—called
a customer terminal—to communicate with
satellites passing overhead. Traditionally, this
equipment has been too large, too complex, and
too expensive for many customers, making it
difficult for LEO constellations to bridge the
digital divide in a meaningful way.
Project Kuiper plans to
serve tens of millions of customers, so we set
an ambitious goal at the start of the project:
design a customer terminal that costs less than
$500 to build. Project Kuiper engineers hit that
milestone in 2020, inventing a new antenna
architecture that was smaller and lighter than
traditional designs. Since then, the team has
continued to innovate to make its terminal
designs even smaller, more affordable, and more
capable.
Amazon recently unveiled
the results of that work. Learn more about the
small, powerful antennas—and the technology
behind them—below.
At a satellite industry
conference in Washington, D.C., Amazon provided
a first look at three engineering models that
will anchor its customer terminal portfolio:
Project Kuiper’s standard
customer terminal measures less than 11 inches
square and 1 inch thick. It weighs less than
five pounds without its mounting bracket.
Despite this modest footprint, the device will
be one of the most powerful commercially
available customer terminals of its size,
delivering speeds up to 400 megabits per second
(Mbps). Amazon expects to produce these
terminals for less than $400 each.
An ultra-compact design to
help connect even more customers: A 7-inch
square design will be Project Kuiper’s smallest
and most affordable customer terminal. Weighing
just 1 pound and offering speeds up to 100 Mbps,
its portability and affordability will create
opportunities to serve even more customers
around the world. This design will connect
residential customers who need an even
lower-cost model, as well as government and
enterprise customers pursuing applications like
ground mobility and internet of things (IoT).
A high-bandwidth design for
the most demanding needs: Project Kuiper’s
largest, most capable model is designed for
enterprise, government, and telecommunications
applications that require even more bandwidth.
The device measures 19 inches by 30 inches, and
will deliver speeds up to 1 gigabit per second
(Gbps).
“Our goal with Project
Kuiper is not just to connect unserved and
underserved communities, but also to delight
them with the quality, reliability, and value of
their service,” said Rajeev Badyal, Amazon’s
vice president of technology for Project Kuiper.
“From day one, every technology and business
decision we’ve made has centered on what will
deliver the best experience for different
customers around the world, and our range of
customer terminals reflects those choices.”
Powered by Amazon-designed
custom chips
Project Kuiper customer
terminals are powered by an Amazon-designed
baseband chip, developed under the code name
“Prometheus.” Prometheus combines the processing
power of a 5G modem chip found in modern
smartphones, the capability of a cellular base
station to handle traffic from thousands of
customers at once, and the ability of a
microwave backhaul antenna to support powerful
point-to-point connections—and it packs all of
that into a single custom chip.
In addition to being in
Project Kuiper’s customer terminals, Prometheus
is also used in Project Kuiper’s satellites and
ground gateway antennas, allowing the system to
process up to 1 terabit per second (Tbps) of
traffic on board each satellite.
Amazon has built and
shipped hundreds of millions of devices for
customers, including best-selling, low-cost
products like Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick.
Project Kuiper is applying that experience to
its customer terminal design and production
processes, and the team is already scaling its
infrastructure in anticipation of building tens
of millions of units for customers.
Project Kuiper is also
preparing to deploy its first two prototype
satellites on the first flight of United Launch
Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket. The
upcoming mission will help Project Kuiper
engineers gain real-world data on how the
systems perform in space and let them test the
entire end-to-end communications network. In
parallel, Project Kuiper is scaling operations
in preparation for offering commercial service.
The team recently began development of a
dedicated satellite production facility in
Kirkland, Washington, and expects to begin
mass-producing satellites by the end of 2023.
Project Kuiper expects to launch the first
production satellites in the first half of 2024
and plans to give its earliest customers access
to the service beginning later that year.
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