This article is adapted from Statementdog interview featuring Johnson Chen, Chairman of the startup YTTEK (円通科技).
Image: YTTEK website
Founding Background: Betting on the Next Wave of 5G mmWave
YTTEK’s core team originates from Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in 2014, where they led R&D for 5G millimeter wave (mmWave) base stations. As Taiwan entered its “5G Inaugural Year” in 2019, the team’s initial mission (FR1) was complete. Confident in the market potential of 5G’s next phase, FR2 (mmWave), the core members left ITRI to establish YTTEK.
Business Pivot: From 5G to SDR Technology
While initially focused on 5G mmWave, YTTEK found the market was maturing slower than expected. Consequently, the company pivoted back to its true core competency: Software Defined Radio (SDR).
The company applied its SDR expertise to two high-growth, yet unstandardized, emerging markets: Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs, or drones).
The YTTEK team possesses over a decade of experience in SDR. They are accustomed to defining architectures, developing algorithms, and implementing them in hardware before international standards (like the 5G standard, finalized in 2017) are even established. This ability to “define the standard in an environment with no standards” is precisely what the current satellite and drone industries require.
Core Technology: What is SDR (Software Defined Radio)?
Software-defined radio moves radio functions into programmable signal processing. YTTEK’s approach described in the interview uses Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) with RF (Radio Frequency) transceivers; FPGA-based hardware is one implementation, not the definition of SDR.
In the IC design workflow, FPGAs are used to validate circuit designs, avoiding the costly and time-consuming “tape-out” process at foundries like TSMC.
-
ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit): Like a traditional piano, its function is fixed. At massive economies of scale (e.g., billions of WiFi or 5G chips annually), the amortized cost is extremely low.
-
FPGA (A Reconfigurable Implementation): Like an electronic synthesizer, its function can be reprogrammed at any time. When production volume is not massive, a reprogrammable FPGA can avoid the upfront cost of a custom ASIC, though the tradeoff depends on performance, power, and volume.
The technical challenge of SDR isn’t just using FPGAs, but the difficult “tuning” (or calibration) and integration with RF components, including ADC/DAC (Analog-to-Digital/Digital-to-Analog Converters). Modern high-end FPGAs, like RFSoCs (RF-System-on-Chip), are complete SoCs that can even perform “Digital RF” functions.
Market Position: Focusing on Modems, Not Antenna Modules
YTTEK’s market position is distinct from other publicly listed communications companies in Taiwan, such as Auden (耀登), UMT (昇達科), or Rapidtek (鐳洋).
These companies primarily focus on developing “array antenna” modules. YTTEK, however, concentrates on the “modem” itself, placing it in a role similar to MediaTek (聯發科) or Realtek (瑞昱). They are partners in an upstream/downstream relationship: YTTEK provides the modem, which is then paired with products from antenna manufacturers.
The Drone Business: Ukraine Experience Reveals Customization Needs
YTTEK engaged with a Ukrainian delegation seeking supply chain partners. They learned that drones on the battlefield, seeking low costs, commonly use off-the-shelf WiFi or LTE technology, even resorting to buying local SIM cards to use the enemy’s cell towers.
The interview highlights the vulnerability of communication links to interference and loss of network access. Off-the-shelf products differ in their security and anti-jamming capabilities; a proprietary protocol is not automatically more resilient.
SDR gives YTTEK flexibility to customize signal processing and communication protocols. Extending a link beyond friendly ground coverage is a separate system-design problem. Satellite communication is one option, subject to the aircraft’s equipment, coverage, and mission requirements.
The Key to Anti-Jamming: Frequency Hopping
The critical challenge in drone communication is “anti-jamming.” Different drones have different needs: “suicide” (or one-way attack) drones must be extremely cheap, while long-range reconnaissance drones (flying 50 to 200 km) are expensive and demand far more complex communication systems.
Frequency hopping is one anti-jamming technique discussed in the interview. It differs from simply switching to another band after a link is blocked.
Frequency hopping coordinates communicating radios so that they change channels according to a shared sequence; it does not require a drone swarm. It can make narrowband interference or tracking more difficult, but it does not guarantee an uninterrupted link. Effectiveness depends on the waveform, synchronization, signal strength, and the jammer’s bandwidth and response. Broadband radio jamming should not be equated with an electromagnetic pulse (EMP).
Taiwan’s “Drone National Team”: The Advantage of Indigenous SDR
Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) has been actively promoting the domestic production of drones, releasing requirements for tens of thousands of units. A core requirement is “indigenous design and manufacturing” to ensure information security.
Under this mandate, control over the radio design can be valuable. The ability to customize a purchased module depends on its hardware, firmware access, and vendor support. The interview presents YTTEK’s own SDR design as a way to reduce dependence on an outside supplier for such changes, rather than establishing that all off-the-shelf modules are unmodifiable.
YTTEK’s advantage is that its SDR solution — software, hardware, and algorithms — is developed entirely in-house. When the MND requests anti-jamming features, other vendors may have to rely on foreign SDR modules, whereas YTTEK possesses the capability for local support and rapid iteration.
Taiwan’s Advantage and the Dual Role of SDR
Taiwan’s greatest advantage in developing drones is its complete manufacturing and assembly supply chain cluster.
SDR plays a critical role here as an “accelerator for verification.” An SDR device is not just a communications unit; it can also function as test instrumentation, serving as both a signal generator (transmitter) and a signal analyzer (receiver) to validate algorithms early in the development phase.
The FPGA-based development path discussed in the interview has two stages:
-
Software Phase: Running on a PC (a common academic approach), where algorithms run on a computer and are converted by an SDR “box.”
-
Hardware Phase: Once mature, the verified algorithms are programmed (“burned”) into an FPGA chip, turning it into a small, lightweight, real-time hardware unit that is ultimately mounted on the drone.
The Drone’s “Eye in the Sky”: LEO Satellite Communication
Satellite links can extend communication beyond ground-network coverage, but are not mandatory for every drone mission. GEO satellites operate about 35,786 km above the equator and generally have longer propagation delays than LEO systems. Latency and bandwidth are separate properties: GEO networks also deliver broadband, as illustrated by Viasat’s ViaSat-3 system. LEO communication satellites can operate at altitudes such as 500–600 km, but that is not the altitude range of all LEO systems. Usable capacity depends on the satellite network and terminal, not orbit alone.
A LEO satellite moves rapidly relative to a ground station, so continuous service generally requires handovers between satellites. The interview’s estimate of 4 to 6 minutes of visibility over Taiwan is an illustrative contact window, not a fixed value for every satellite; orbit and the ground station’s elevation limits affect the duration.
The interview discussed an estimate of at least 150 satellites for a proposed Taiwanese real-time constellation. Such a count depends on coverage and service assumptions and should not be treated as a universal minimum. Chen also described YTTEK’s work on communication range and anti-jamming requirements, including designs in the 950–1250 MHz range. These comments reflect the interview’s 2025 context, not a complete statement of current procurement or spectrum rules.
International Competition: A Startup’s Battlefield and Taiwan’s Supply Chain Edge
Internationally, competitors in drone communications are mostly startups from the US, Canada, and Australia. The total market volume is still too small to offer a sufficient ROI for giants like MediaTek, so they have not yet entered the fray.
Taiwan’s advantage lies in its powerful supply chain cluster, making it competitive in both cost and functionality. Securing MND contracts provides a crucial “trial by fire,” allowing companies to accumulate “field experience” to optimize products for international export.
Breaking into the Space Agency: Flight Heritage and Ground Station Import Replacement
The LEO satellite industry has an extremely high barrier to entry. Starlink’s protocol, for instance, is proprietary (not public) and involves national security considerations.
Flight heritage is an important qualification advantage for spaceborne hardware. Demonstrating that a payload survives launch and the space environment can reduce a customer’s perceived risk; it is not a universal prerequisite for every new component or ground-station product.
YTTEK is already collaborating with TASA on satellite payloads and ground reception stations. Its indigenously developed ground station has passed testing and is now in service as an “import replacement” solution, used to receive telemetry signals from the Formosat-5 satellite.
Updated Oct 16, 2026