Embracing Small Satellites Into Future 6G Inclusive IoT Coverage: A Deployment of Diversity-Based Theoretical Framework

Abstract

The popular small satellites already attracted attention towards the integration into the future ubiquitous Internet of Things (IoT) networks. Small satellites can act as IoT base stations to efficiently collect data from sensors in remote areas and offload it to ground stations (GSs). The size constraints of small satellites, however, impose limited power resources and tiny antennas onboard. Consequently, weak signals and outages are more probable at GSs. Therefore, GSs must utilize high gain antennas with complex and expensive steering resources to collect such weak signals through a single radio link. This traditional scheme can track only one satellite at a time with more vulnerability to outages resulting from possible severe signal degradations or from steering engine failures. To contribute to a successful integration of the popular small satellites into the future sixth generation (6G) inclusive IoT networks, this work validates the concept of diversity combining in improving the reception of small satellites signals. Six versions of the small satellite VZLUSAT-2's beacon were recorded by six simple software defined radio GSs registered at SatNOGS network and then combined. To assess the quality of the combined version, its errors are compared to the errors of the individual versions. According to the findings, if the GSs worked cooperatively in a diversity mode, they could generate a combined version that was always better than any other individually received stream. Furthermore, such a diversity-based scheme reduces the probability of outages and enables the simultaneous tracking of multiple satellites at each GS.