from the website above. ONE-OF-A-KIND MESH ARCHITECTURE
In space, each Iridium NEXT satellite will be cross-linked to 4 others — 2 in the same orbital plane and 1 in each adjacent plane — allowing the network to hand off traffic among satellites to deliver lower latency, avoid redundancy and ensure a continuous connection.
48 SPOT BEAMS PER SATELLITE
Spot beams project down from satellites to create a concentrated signal reception area. With Iridium NEXT, the size of each spot beam will be roughly 250 miles in diameter and each satellite’s full 48-beam footprint will be roughly 2,800 miles in diameter. This allows for the spot beams to overlap and minimizes missed connections and dropped calls.
