Integration of Satellites into 5G Eco-systems

The Fifth-Generation of Mobile Communications (5G) is intended to satisfy the growing needs of users which can be summarised in the ability to access good quality services anywhere and at any time. Those needs can be supported by the integration of satellites in 5G systems due to the unique characteristics of satellites in terms of higher coverage, reliability, and availability. In particular, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations offer an appealing approach for supporting and complementing Fifth-Generation of Mobile Communications (5G) New Radio (NR) communications have the advantages of low propagation delay and low energy consumption which makes them the best candidates for direct access 5G Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN). However, the major problem of LEO satellites is their higher speed relative to the terrestrial mobile terminals, which causes mobile users to hand over between satellites which has a negative impact on users’ Quality of Service (QoS) if occurs in high frequency. Moreover, 5G communication technologies are designed to support a wide spectrum of applications, including Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Thus, differentiating User Equipments (UEs) with different and varying Traffic-Profiles (TP) has become necessary due to each application’s unique performance requirements. Complicating matters further, LEO satellites operate with limited onboard resources, including energy and channel resources. Thus a satellite handover management strategy is needed to tackle all the above challenges. To tackle these challenges, we propose innovative LEO Satellite Handover management strategies. These strategies mark a groundbreaking advancement by accounting for application diversity per user and addressing the limited energy resources of LEO satellites. Notably, these strategies successfully minimize the number of HOs, achieving a zero blocking rate while effectively balancing the load among satellites. On the other hand, to minimize blind exploitation of new systems, new technologies should be verified and enhanced before being implemented to reduce the required cost and time. In this context, we implemented an open-source System Level Simulator (SLS) built on the foundation of the Network Simulator 3 (NS-3). This tool enables the simulation of 5G Satellite-Terrestrial Integrated Networks (STIN) and surpasses existing solutions by supporting Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) handover decisions, dynamic BandWidth Part (BWP) selection, and Component Carrier (CC) configurations tailored to different traffic profiles.