Convergence of Satellite and Terrestrial Networks: A Comprehensive Survey

Peng Wang,Jiaxin Zhang,Barry G Evans,Xing Zhang,Zhi Yan,Wenbo Wang

doi:10.1109/access.2019.2963223

Abstract

The explosive growth of various services boosts the innovation and development in terrestrial communication systems for the implementation of the next generation mobile communication networks. However, simply utilizing limited resources in terrestrial communication networks is difficult to support the massive quality of service (QoS) aware requirements and it is hard to guarantee seamless coverage in far remote regions. Leveraging the intrinsic merits of high altitude and the ability of multicasting or broadcasting, satellite communication systems provide an opportunity for novel mobile communication networks with its tight interaction and complementary characteristics to traditional terrestrial networks. It is believed that the convergence of satellite and terrestrial networks can solve the problems existing in current mobile communication systems and make a profound effect on global information dissemination. In this paper, we make a comprehensive survey on the convergence of satellite and terrestrial networks. First, motivations and requirements of satellite-terrestrial network convergence are identified. Then, we summarize related architectures of existing literature, classify the taxonomy of researches on satellite-terrestrial networks, and present the performance evaluation works in different satellite-terrestrial networks. After that, the state-of-the-art of standardization, projects and the key application areas of satellite-terrestrial networks are also reviewed. Finally, we conclude the survey by highlighting the open issues and future directions.

Highlights

Last decades have witnessed a sprout of demands and new applications in the communication industry, innovations are breaking the bottleneck of restrictions and consolidating the procedure of constructing the ubiquitous reliable networks for the generation
To avoid endless-loop, authors use records containing passed nodes, the results show that the design avoids the unnecessary cost of resources, the multi-service type should be considered when implementation is made
Performance evaluation of integrated satellite-terrestrial network is usually performed via numerical simulations or mathematical analysis, from open literature that we review, most performance analysis focus on (i) Satellite-terrestrial backhaul networks, (ii) Hybrid satellite-terrestrial cooperative systems (HSTCS) and (iii) Cognitive hybrid satellite-terrestrial networks (CHSTN)

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Last decades have witnessed a sprout of demands and new applications in the communication industry, innovations are breaking the bottleneck of restrictions and consolidating the procedure of constructing the ubiquitous reliable networks for the generation. Focusing on LEO satellites’ rapid mobility and the limited controller process ability on broad, Papa et al propose a solution for controller placement problem of SDN-based LEO satellite networks [44] They develop a dynamic controller placement on the LEO satellites, and find a method considering spatial and temporal user traffic requirements. In [45], authors elaborate on the architecture of an SDN-based LEO satellite and terrestrial networks, they model the data flow and proposed a plastic path with the consideration of latency, capacity, wavelength fragmentation, and load balancing It shows that LEO networks can help the networks performs better with a slight disadvantage in latency when the service requirements are overload. In SDN based architecture [201], application plane security challenges (fraudulent flow rules insertion and lack of authentication), control plane security challenges (denial of service (DoS) attacks), and data plane security challenges (TCP-level attacks, flooding attacks) cannot be solved in physical layer

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION STUDIES AND SIMULATION PLATFORMS

CHALLENGES AND OPEN ISSUES

Findings

CONCLUSION