Abstract
The satellite component is recognized as a promising solution to complement and extend the coverage of future Internet of Things (IoT) terrestrial networks (TNs). In this context, a study item to integrate satellites into narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) systems has been approved within the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standardization body. However, as NB-IoT systems were initially conceived for TNs, their basic design principles and operation might require some key modifications when incorporating the satellite component. These changes in NB-IoT systems, therefore, need to be carefully implemented in order to guarantee a seamless integration of both TN and nonterrestrial network (NTN) for a global coverage. This article addresses this adaptation for the random access (RA) step in NB-IoT systems, which is in fact the most challenging aspect in the NTN context, for it deals with multiuser time-frequency synchronization and timing advance for data scheduling. In particular, we propose an RA technique which is robust to typical satellite channel impairments, including long delays, significant Doppler effects, and wide beams, without requiring any modification to the current NB-IoT RA waveform. Performance evaluations demonstrate the proposal’s capability of addressing different NTN configurations recently defined by 3GPP for the 5G new radio system.
Highlights
I N recent years, a high connectivity demand has started to be experienced in wireless communications
A new receiver method was designed for the integration of NB-Internet of things (IoT) random access in non-terrestrial networks
A detailed scenario definition along with link budget description as well as some design aspects related to the integration of narrowband Internet of things (NB-IoT) random access via low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites were provided
Summary
I N recent years, a high connectivity demand has started to be experienced in wireless communications. In this case, the additional delay, called differential delay (DD) in 3GPP terminology, and frequency offset in the beam (e.g. UE1-DD and foff/UE1 in Fig. 1) are assumed to be handled by the protocol [7]. Regarding 5G-NR RA, it was concluded in [5] that, in the case of UEs with GNSS capability (assumption for precompensation of timing and frequency offset at the UE side based on GNSS and ephemeris information), existing RA preambles can be reused if the knowledge of UE’s geo-location is available and meets the prescribed accuracy level.
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