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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/non-terrestrial-network-edge-computing-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-07-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Telecom & WirelessNon-Terrestrial Network Edge Computing Patents: Who's Filing and Where the Field Is Stalling
- Filing has plateaued, not grown. 2024 was the peak year at 177 families, but 2026 is tracking back near the 2017 starting level of 31 — this is a field that surged and is now cooling, not one still accelerating.
- Wireless protocol claims dominate over onboard compute. H04W and H04B together cover 857 of the underlying IPC hits, while G06F (digital data processing) sits at just 52 — the 'edge computing' half of this topic is thin compared to the 'non-terrestrial network' half.
- Momentum is falling across every major filer at once. Every tracked assignee shows a year-on-year decline in the most recent year, from -50% to -100%, suggesting a synchronized pullback rather than one company losing share to another.
1,017
Published Records
40%
Top-5 Share of All Records
+58%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (112 records) with 2024 (177) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 1,017 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··7 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What this dataset covers
This landscape tracks patent families at the intersection of non-terrestrial network (NTN) communications — satellite, high-altitude platform and low-earth-orbit links — and onboard or in-orbit computing, the processing that happens on the spacecraft or terminal rather than after a signal reaches a ground station. The search spans records published between 2015 and mid-2026, with 1,017 total patent families forming the ranking base.
The technology composition skews heavily toward communications-layer claims — synchronization, bandwidth allocation, timeslot structure — rather than the compute architecture itself. That split matters for anyone assessing freedom to operate: dense prior art in the radio-link classes does not mean the onboard processing stack is equally covered.
Filing activity, 2017-2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Non-Terrestrial Network Edge Computing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
The Data
Filing trend and technology composition
Publication data lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the 2026 figure understates true filing activity for that year; treat the last one to two years as a floor, not a ceiling.
A peak-and-decline shape, not a steady climb
Filings rose from 31 in 2017 to a peak of 177 in 2024, passing through 47 at the 2022 midpoint. The pace since the peak has fallen back toward early-period levels, consistent with a technology area that had a concentrated filing wave rather than sustained compounding growth.
Communications classes crowd out compute classes
H04W (486) and H04B (371) between them account for the large majority of IPC hits, with H04L (228) close behind. Positioning (G01S, 51), traffic control (G08G, 41), non-electric control (G05D, 39) and multiplex communication (H04J, 39) form a mid tier, while G06F — the class most directly tied to onboard data processing — sits at only 52 records.
Shares are the percentage of the 1,017 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Non-Terrestrial Network Edge Computing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
Go deeper on Non-Terrestrial Network Edge Computing with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about non-terrestrial network edge computing and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
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Most-cited records and a recent representative filing
Representative recent filing
US20260231063A1 — IoT NTN downlink timeslot synchronization signal positioning
SHARP KABUSHIKI KAISHA
An internet of things (IoT) non-terrestrial network (NTN) device user equipment (UE) is described. The UE includes receiving circuitry configured to receive synchronization signals in an IoT NTN downlink (DL) timeslot and to determine a relative location of at least one synchronization signal within the IoT NTN DL timeslot.Filed by Sharp, published August 2026 — one of the most recent records in the corpus and illustrative of where active claim drafting is concentrated: timeslot and synchronization structure for IoT-class NTN devices.
Highest-cited records in this corpus
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6161008A | Personal mobility and communication termination for users operating in a plurality of heterogeneous networks | 459 |
| 2 | US6366761B1 | Priority-based bandwidth allocation and bandwidth-on-demand in a low-earth-orbit satellite data communication… | 312 |
| 3 | US20080024594A1 | Panoramic image-based virtual reality/telepresence audio-visual system and method | 294 |
| 4 | US20070182812A1 | Panoramic image-based virtual reality/telepresence audio-visual system and method | 259 |
| 5 | US5594780A | Satellite communication system that is coupled to a terrestrial communication network and method | 248 |
| 6 | US20180239982A1 | Satellite with machine vision | 220 |
| 7 | US4491947A | Technique for dynamic scheduling of integrated circuit- and packet-switching in a multi-beam SS/TDMA system | 205 |
| 8 | US20180157930A1 | Satellite constellation with image edge processing | 201 |
| 9 | US20120258436A1 | Automated assessment of cognitive, fine-motor, and memory skills | 177 |
| 10 | US20230156826A1 | Edge computing in satellite connectivity environments | 165 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate citations — read these as markers of foundational influence, not current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Non-Terrestrial Network Edge Computing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the numbers say about this field
Three patterns stand out once the raw counts are set against each other: where filings concentrate, where offices see the activity, and how citation age skews the influential-patent list.
Filing shape
177 in 2024
peak year
The wave has crested
Filings ran from 31 in 2017 through a 2022 midpoint of 47 up to a peak of 177 in 2024, then eased back toward 30 by 2026. That is a single filing wave, not a compounding trend — useful context before assuming the space is still heating up.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Jurisdiction
349 US filings
vs 217 PCT, 205 EPO
US-first filing strategy
The United States receives more filings than any other office tracked, with PCT and EPO close behind and India, Canada and Australia forming a smaller secondary tier. Anyone clearing freedom to operate should treat the US and EPO dockets as the primary search set.
Receiving offices
Citation skew
459 citations
top-cited record
Influence sits with older art
The most-cited records in this corpus date from well before the 2024 filing peak, including foundational bandwidth-allocation and heterogeneous-network mobility patents. Newer filings have not had time to accumulate comparable citation counts, so citation rank should not be read as a current-relevance signal.
Most-cited records
Eureka AI Agent
Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to non-terrestrial network edge computing, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Non-Terrestrial Network Edge Computing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Players
Who is active, and how activity is shifting
Every tracked assignee shows a year-on-year decline in the latest recorded year, from -50% down to -100%. That pattern points to a broad pullback across the field rather than one company overtaking another, and it means recent-year counts alone are a poor way to rank current strength.
Steepest decline
-100% YoY
three assignees at zero
Several major filers went to zero
Sharp, Apple and Viasat each recorded zero filings in the latest year against a prior-year baseline, a full stop rather than a slowdown. Given publication lag, some of this may reflect filings still working through the pipeline rather than an actual halt.
Recent-year momentum
Still filing, but slower
-88% to -94% YoY
LG, Ofinno
The most active recent filers are still shrinking
LG Electronics (2 filings) and Ofinno (1 filing) remain the closest to active in the latest year, but both are down sharply from their prior-year pace. Qualcomm's single filing at -50% YoY is the smallest decline among the tracked group.
Recent-year momentum
Collaboration
10 co-assignee pairs
strongest pair: 8 shared filings
Collaboration is concentrated, not broad
Co-filing activity is limited to a small number of pairs, with the strongest link tied to Ofinno's named inventor pairings. This is a field of largely independent filers rather than one built on joint-venture patenting.
Co-assignee pairs
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| LG Electronics | 2 | -94% |
| Ofinno, LLC | 1 | -88% |
| Qualcomm Incorporated | 1 | -50% |
| Sharp Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| Apple Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Viasat, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| Globalstar, Inc. | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Non-Terrestrial Network Edge Computing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's Next
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a field with occupied communications-layer claim space and comparatively open onboard-compute claim space. Two directions follow from that.
Map freedom to operate in G06F-adjacent claims
With only 52 records in the digital-data-processing class against 486 in wireless networks, a targeted search of onboard compute architecture claims is likely to surface less blocking art than a search of the radio-link classes.
Explore this in EurekaTrack whether the pullback reverses
Every major assignee shows a year-on-year decline, but publication lag means 2025-2026 filings are still arriving. A follow-up check in a year will show whether this was a pause or a genuine end to the filing wave.
Set up monitoring in EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Non-Terrestrial Network Edge Computing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions about NTN edge computing patents
It refers to patent claims covering processing that happens on or near a satellite, high-altitude platform or NTN terminal, rather than after data reaches a ground station. In this corpus that spans onboard data processing, synchronization signal handling, and timeslot or bandwidth management performed at the edge of the network. The search combines NTN and satellite-communication terms with onboard-processing and in-orbit-computing terms, which is why the technology composition still leans heavily toward wireless protocol classes like H04W and H04B rather than pure compute classes like G06F.
The recent-year momentum data shows LG Electronics and Ofinno as the assignees with any filings at all in the latest tracked year, though both are down sharply year-on-year. Qualcomm, Sharp, Apple and Viasat also appear among the tracked assignees, with several showing a full stop to filings in the most recent year. Because publication lags filing by around 18 months, current-year figures for all of these firms likely understate their actual filing activity.
No — the trend data shows a peak-and-decline shape rather than sustained growth. Filings rose from 31 in 2017 to a peak of 177 in 2024, then fell back toward 30 by 2026, passing through a 2022 midpoint of 47. Combined with the fact that every major assignee shows a year-on-year decline in the latest period, the evidence points to a filing wave that has already crested rather than an area still accelerating.
The clearest gap is between the volume of wireless-protocol claims and the volume of compute-architecture claims: H04W and H04B together account for 857 of the IPC hits, while G06F sits at only 52. Sub-areas like onboard AI inference scheduling, in-orbit data compression, and radiation-hardened edge compute modules are not separately broken out in the classification data, which is itself a sign they are thinner in claim coverage than core synchronization and bandwidth-allocation claims. Anyone drafting in this space should search the G06F, G05D and G08G classes specifically rather than relying on a general NTN keyword search.
The United States leads with 349 filings in this corpus, followed by PCT applications at 217 and the European Patent Office at 205. India, Canada and Australia form a smaller secondary tier at 69, 46 and 22 respectively. A freedom-to-operate search that skips the US and EPO dockets would miss the large majority of the documented activity in this field.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Non-Terrestrial Network Edge Computing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company's registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.