QoE-Driven Intelligent Handover for User-Centric Mobile Satellite Networks

Abstract

Recently, many satellites are being launched for providing global internet broadband service to individual consumers. Since satellites and users could move separately, providing seamless connectivity has become one of the most important tasks for mobile satellite networks. Current handover methods are based on either signal strength or service time, however, due to the randomness of user terminal (UT) arrivals and the unbalanced traffic distribution for high-mobility satellite networks, the success rate can hardly be guaranteed. To this end, we propose a QoE-driven intelligent handover mechanism for user-centric mobile satellite networks, through which the access satellites can be selected by predicted service time and communication channel resources. Accordingly, to ensure the service duration, a spatial relationship coupling model is proposed to predict relative motion pattern between UT and satellites; To improve the effectiveness of handover, an available channel estimation model is then developed based on the mobility pattern of adjacent satellites. Finally, reinforcement learning is adopted to maximize the UT <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^\prime$</tex-math></inline-formula> s Quality of Experience (QoE) through predicted handover factors. Simulation results show that the proposed handover mechanism offers good performance in terms of handover times, handover success rate and end-to-end delay.