Latency-Aware Offloading in Integrated Satellite Terrestrial Networks

Abstract

Next-generation communication networks are expected to integrate newly-used technologies in a smart way to ensure continuous connectivity in rural areas and to alleviate the traffic load in dense regions. The prospective access network in 6G should hinge on satellite systems to take advantage of their wide coverage and high capacity. However, adopting satellites in 6G could be hindered because of the additional latency introduced, which is not tolerable by all traffic types. Therefore, we propose a traffic offloading scheme that integrates both the satellite and terrestrial networks to smartly allocate the traffic between them while satisfying different traffic requirements. Specifically, the proposed scheme offloads the Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC) traffic to the terrestrial backhaul to satisfy its stringent latency requirement. However, it offloads the enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) traffic to the satellite since eMBB needs high data rates but is not always sensitive to delay. Our scheme is shown to reduce the transmission delay of URLLC packets, decrease the number of dropped eMBB packets, and hence improve the network's availability. Our findings highlight that the inter-working between satellite and terrestrial networks is crucial to mitigate the expected high load on the limited terrestrial capacity.

HST-NNC: A Novel Hybrid Satellite-Terrestrial Communication With NOMA and Network Coding Systems

“…The results of this work showed that improved energy efficiency is achieved with a similar traffic offloading performance used in traditional terrestrial systems. Similarly, [12] has developed a traffic offloading scheme that exploits the HSTN system's capabilities to overcome the capacity limitations of the terrestrial backhaul by allocating the traffic between the satellite and the terrestrial segment while satisfying different traffic requirements. Furthermore, the authors in [13] have presented an RAN for integrated satelliteterrestrial networks, proposing a load balancing algorithm, supporting a large number of users, and increasing the network throughput.…”

Heterogeneous Traffic Offloading in Space-Air-Ground Integrated Networks

“…Flow sizes are independently and identically distributed with mean 1 µe for eMBB slice and 1 µu for URLLC slice, such that 1 µe and 1 µu represent the flow size for both traffic types, respectively. The total load of URLLC traffic and eMBB traffic in the v-th micro base station are denoted by L e v rts and L u v rts respectively and are assessed as [19], [20], [23]:…”

“…The achievable data rate R sat v rts between the vth micro base station and the satellite at time slot t is expressed as [13], [23]:…”

“…In this section, we study the mean delay f delay v experienced by the URLLC packets offloaded by micro base station v in time slot t over the terrestrial link and the UAV link [23], [28], [29]. We assume that the scheduling discipline is first come first serve (FCFS).…”

Performance Analysis of Wireless Mesh Backhauling Using Intelligent Reflecting Surface

“…The main advantages of wireless backhauling over traditional wired backhauling are the implementation flexibility, cost efficiency, and lowcomplexity maintenance processes. Moreover, integrated access and backhauling is considered as a promising approach to reduce the deployment cost in ultra-dense networks [7]- [9]. Therefore, wireless backhauling has attracted extensive research attention to develop efficient backhauling solutions.…”