As Europe prepares for its largest-ever coordinated wildfire response, drones are becoming indispensable tools for spotting fires, tracking their spread, and keeping emergency crews informed. The problem? Once those drones leave cellular coverage, getting live video back to responders typically means carrying heavy satellite terminals. That’s exactly the challenge OQ Technology says it has solved with a new satellite demonstration.
The company has successfully completed what it calls Europe’s first drone video transmission over a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite network using standardized 3GPP Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) technology operating on Mobile Satellite Service (MSS) S-band spectrum.
The demonstration, which you can watch on YouTube below, involved a compact drone transmitting video through OQ Technology’s European LEO satellite constellation before the footage was delivered through a secure cloud infrastructure located in Europe.
What’s particularly interesting isn’t just that the drone sent video via satellite. It’s how it accomplished the task.
Instead of relying on the bulky VSAT or broadband satellite terminals commonly used for beyond-line-of-sight communications, the drone carried a compact 3GPP NTN IoT modem integrated directly into the aircraft. The video was processed and compressed onboard using edge computing before being transmitted over a narrowband satellite connection, dramatically reducing the size, weight, power requirements, and overall cost of the system.
