5G Massive Machine Type Communication Performance in Non-Terrestrial Networks with LEO Satellites

Abstract

An Internet of Things (IoT) non-terrestrial network (NTN) refers to an IoT network that utilizes airborne or spaceborne payload for communication. Using NTNs to serve IoT devices has the potential of further expanding the use cases as well as coverage for IoT. This has motivated the work in 3GPP on evolving Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) and Long Term Evolution for machine type communications (LTE-M) wireless access technologies to support NTN. While the topic of IoT over NTN has attracted much attention, the performance of IoT NTN has not been well studied. In this paper, we investigate the performance of IoT low Earth orbit (LEO) NTN utilizing LTE-M by evaluating the connection density. The evaluation results show that for a LEO satellite at 600 and 1200 km altitude, LTE-M can support 364 and 78 users per km² for a single narrowband in its coverage area, respectively. This implies that an LTE-M based LEO NTN can potentially serve IoT in remote areas, thereby complementing the coverage of terrestrial networks.