In this dataset, a record has to combine NTN or satellite-communication network terms with a modeling or simulation term — satellite channel modeling, link budget simulation or constellation simulation — appearing together in the title, abstract or claims. This excludes general NTN hardware or protocol patents that do not touch modeling, and it excludes generic simulation tools that are not tied to a satellite or non-terrestrial network context. The result is a narrow, purpose-built corpus of 39 patent families rather than the whole NTN patent space.

Patent applications typically publish about 18 months after they are filed, so any recent year in a filing trend is understated simply because the newest filings have not yet become public. The peak of 12 families in 2023 followed by a lower count is therefore not necessarily a real decline in filing interest; it may partly reflect applications still working through the publication pipeline. A clearer read on 2024-2026 activity requires checking application-stage filings directly rather than relying on published counts alone.

China is the largest single receiving office in this corpus at 16 filings, more than double the United States at 7 and well ahead of PCT applications at 6 and the EPO at 5. Any clearance search that limits itself to English-language US or European databases will miss the largest bloc of relevant prior art. A thorough review should include Chinese-language full-text search alongside the usual US, EPO and WIPO sources.

Both are plausible readings. H04B, general transmission, holds 32 of the 39 tracked records, which does indicate dense claim activity around physical-layer transmission and channel characteristics for satellite links. But high density in one IPC subclass does not by itself mean the underlying technology is mature or settled — it means that particular claim space is occupied, while adjacent classifications like H04W and G06F carry far fewer filings and may still be open.

The corpus includes a mix of corporate assignees such as Huawei Technologies and Qualcomm, an academic filer in Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, and a tightly linked group of individual co-inventors — Timpe Miles, Hobbs Alexander and Deguillaume Frederic — who co-file together with a link strength of 4 across all three pairwise combinations. Momentum across all of these named filers is flat in the most recent tracked year, consistent with the broader plateau visible in the overall filing trend.