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State-of-the-Art in Satellite Communication Networks

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A special issue of Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292). This special issue belongs to the section "Networks".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2022) | Viewed by 45397

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Special Issue Editor

Dr. Mauro Tropea

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DIMES Department, University of Calabria, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy
Interests: satellite networks; vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANET); flying ad-hoc networks (FANET); UAVs; channel modeling
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Satellite networks provide a wide range of coverage throughout the globe and play a very important role due to their broadcasting capacity and bandwidth flexibility. They are able to provide broadband services to citizens in rural areas, to passengers aboard vessels, trains, or aircrafts, quick Internet access in emergency scenarios, backhauling of other access technology. In terrestrial networks, many links and nodes are needed to reach long distances and cover large areas. Satellite networks are very useful in providing wide coverage to villages and places where wired networks are not possible, such as hills and forests. It should be noted that 2/3 of the world still do not have the infrastructure for the Internet. This kind of networks can be categorized according to their orbits. In particular, geosynchronous satellites, located over the equator, have the same angular speed as Earth allowing them to be a fixed point for users. New standards and technologies have been proposed in recent years to exploit the specific characteristics of these platforms, such as scheduling, mobility, routing, QoS, and many others. An important issue regards the possibility of integrating satellite networks with other platforms to guarantee better services to the always more exigent users. New architectures, such as Digital Video Broadcasting, are focusing on multimedia traffic streams with the possibility of using interactive services. This type of traffic requires high bandwidth and high levels of QoS to meet user requirements. Traffic shaping and rate/congestion control, bandwidth allocation, flow control, and video scalability are some of the technical challenges to be considered in managing multimedia traffic over satellite networks.

We invite investigators to contribute original research papers and review/survey articles that will stimulate the continuing efforts to study and analyze the intrinsic issues of the satellite environment. This Special Issue aims at publishing high-quality research and development results of broadband satellite communications and multimedia traffic technologies. Each research and development result related to satellite technologies is welcome.

Potential topics include but are not limited to:

- New satellite technologies

- New small spacecraft technologies: CubeSats

- Integration platforms (LTE, 5G, DTN, Sensor Networks, WiFi, WiMax, VANET, FANET) with satellites

- Architectures and protocols for satellite

- QoS architectures for satellite

- Routing in satellite networks

- DVB-S2/DVB-S2X/DVB-RCS2/DVB-SH architectures

- Mobile propagation channel for satellite systems

- Studies on new bands for satellite networks

- Studies on gap filler solutions in land mobile satellite systems

- Hybrid broadband multibeam satellite architectures

- Multimedia traffic on satellite

- Scheduling issues for satellite

- Mobile satellite service (MSS) systems

- Cognitive radios for reliable satellite communications

- Call admission control for hybrid satellite networks

Dr. Mauro Tropea
Guest Editor

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Published Papers (12 papers)

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Editorial

Jump to: Research, Review

4 pages, 159 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

State-of-the-Art in Satellite Communication Networks

by Mauro Tropea

Electronics 2022, 11(9), 1368; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11091368 - 25 Apr 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2235

Abstract

Satellite networks provide a wide range of coverage throughout the globe and play a very important role due to their broadcasting capacity and bandwidth flexibility [...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art in Satellite Communication Networks)

Research

Jump to: Editorial, Review

29 pages, 7332 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Machine Learning for Radio Resource Management in Multibeam GEO Satellite Systems

by Flor G. Ortiz-Gomez, Lei Lei, Eva Lagunas, Ramon Martinez, Daniele Tarchi, Jorge Querol, Miguel A. Salas-Natera and Symeon Chatzinotas

Electronics 2022, 11(7), 992; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11070992 - 23 Mar 2022

Cited by 19 | Viewed by 5025

Abstract

Satellite communications (SatComs) systems are facing a massive increase in traffic demand. However, this increase is not uniform across the service area due to the uneven distribution of users and changes in traffic demand diurnal. This problem is addressed by using flexible payload architectures, which allow payload resources to be flexibly allocated to meet the traffic demand of each beam. While optimization-based radio resource management (RRM) has shown significant performance gains, its intense computational complexity limits its practical implementation in real systems. In this paper, we discuss the architecture, implementation and applications of Machine Learning (ML) for resource management in multibeam GEO satellite systems. We mainly focus on two systems, one with power, bandwidth, and/or beamwidth flexibility, and the second with time flexibility, i.e., beam hopping. We analyze and compare different ML techniques that have been proposed for these architectures, emphasizing the use of Supervised Learning (SL) and Reinforcement Learning (RL). To this end, we define whether training should be conducted online or offline based on the characteristics and requirements of each proposed ML technique and discuss the most appropriate system architecture and the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art in Satellite Communication Networks)

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15 pages, 926 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Two-Step Handover Strategy for GEO/LEO Heterogeneous Satellite Networks Based on Multi-Attribute Decision Making

by Liangyi Zhang, Shaohua Wu, Xiyu Lv and Jian Jiao

Electronics 2022, 11(5), 795; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11050795 - 3 Mar 2022

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 4038

Abstract

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites can provide high-speed and low-delay services for terrestrial users; however, the rapid movement of LEO satellites and the insufficient size of the LEO constellations incurs the instability of the transmission links. The rapid movement of LEO satellites also leads to frequent handovers. Fortunately, GEO/LEO heterogeneous satellite systems can remedy this shortcoming. As the handover decision strategy which makes the selection among the available satellites will directly impact the performance of GEO/LEO heterogeneous satellite systems, we propose a two-step access and handover decision strategy for heterogeneous satellite networks in this paper. Firstly, a GEO/LEO network selection is carried out based on utility functions that reflect user’s QoS requirements. Then, the multi-attribute decision making (MADM) method is used to select the specific LEO satellite if users select LEO satellite network. We also propose an Importance-TOPSIS scheme to improve the weight setting for handover attributes. Simulation results show that the proposed method can reduce the number of handovers and the forced termination probability of the system, and the overall throughput of the system is also improved. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art in Satellite Communication Networks)

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18 pages, 2604 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Blockchain-Based Authentication Protocol Using Cryptocurrency Technology in LEO Satellite Networks

by Xia Deng, Junbin Shao, Le Chang and Junbin Liang

Electronics 2021, 10(24), 3151; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10243151 - 17 Dec 2021

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 4443

Abstract

With the rapid development of satellite technology and the high transmission efficiency of LEO satellites, LEO satellite communication has received increasing attention. However, the frequent switching of satellite-earth links imposes a great challenge in LEO communication authentication. To tackle this challenge, this paper proposes a Blockchain-based Authentication Protocol Using Cryptocurrency Technology (BAPC), which solves the problem of a long pause time of satellite services caused by user access authentication in a scenario of frequent switching between satellites and ground users. First, we design three stages of the authentication process and introduce the cryptocurrency technology. Using currency transactions as the certificate of authentication improves not only the security of authentication, but also the efficiency of switching authentication. Next, in the network topology, the satellite cluster is divided into multiple regions to improve the efficiency of block consensus. Finally, the protocol is tested through extensive NS2-based simulations, and the results verify that BAPC can greatly shorten the response time of switching authentication and significantly reduce the time of block generation and the network throughput. As the number of users increases, the block generation time and network throughput can be further reduced. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art in Satellite Communication Networks)

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16 pages, 641 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Efficient Iterative Timing Recovery of Low-Density Parity-Check Decoding Metrics Using the Steepest Descent Algorithm for Satellite Communications at Low SNRs

by Yu Qiu, Chao Liu, Jianrong Bao, Bin Jiang and Yanhai Shang

Electronics 2021, 10(24), 3055; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10243055 - 8 Dec 2021

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2217

Abstract

An efficient iterative timing recovery via steepest descent of low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoding metrics is presented. In the proposed algorithm, a more accurate symbol timing synchronization is achieved at a low signal-to-noise (SNR) without any pilot symbol by maximizing the sum of the square of all soft metrics in LDPC decoding. The principle of the above-proposed algorithm is analyzed theoretically with the evolution trend of the probability mean of the soft LDPC decoding metrics by the Gaussian approximation. In addition, an efficiently approximate gradient descent algorithm is adopted to obtain excellent timing recovery with rather low complexity and global convergence. Finally, a complete timing recovery is accomplished where the proposed scheme performs fine timing capture, followed by a traditional Mueller–Müller (M&M) timing recovery, which acquires timing track. Using the proposed iterative timing recovery method, the simulation results indicate that the performance of the LDPC coded binary phase shift keying (BPSK) scheme with rather large timing errors is just within 0.1 dB of the ideal code performance at the cost of some rational computation and storage. Therefore, the proposed iterative timing recovery can be efficiently applied on occasions of the weak signal timing synchronization in satellite communications and so on. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art in Satellite Communication Networks)

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14 pages, 10133 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Dynamic Beam Hopping Time Slots Allocation Based on Genetic Algorithm of Satellite Communication under Time-Varying Rain Attenuation

by Chen Zhang, Jiangtao Yang, Yong Zhang, Ziwei Liu and Gengxin Zhang

Electronics 2021, 10(23), 2909; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10232909 - 24 Nov 2021

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2911

Abstract

Beam hopping technology is considered to provide a high level of flexible resource allocation to manage uneven traffic requests in multi-beam high throughput satellite systems. Conventional beam hopping resource allocation methods assume constant rainfall attenuation. Different from conventional methods, by employing genetic algorithm this paper studies dynamic beam hopping time slots allocation under the effect of time-varying rain attenuation. Firstly, a beam hopping system model as well as rain attenuation time series based on Dirac lognormal distribution are provided. On this basis, the dynamic allocation method by employing genetic algorithm is proposed to obtain both quantity and arrangement of time slots allocated for each beam. Simulation results show that, compared with conventional methods, the proposed algorithm can dynamically adjust time slots allocation to meet the non-uniform traffic requirements of each beam under the effect of time-varying rain attenuation and effectively improve system performance. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art in Satellite Communication Networks)

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22 pages, 2764 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Multi-Beam Satellite Cooperative Transmission Scheme Based on Resources Optimization and Packets Segmentation

by Zhongliang Deng, Xiaoyi Yu, Wenliang Lin, Ke Wang, Hao Liu, Lei Gu, Yang Liu and Xiaojuan Ma

Electronics 2021, 10(22), 2841; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10222841 - 18 Nov 2021

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 4210

Abstract

Multi-beam satellite communication systems are promising architectures in the future. A packet is transmitted by multi-satellite and multi-beam cooperatively, which can provide efficient spectrum utilization, improve system throughput, and guarantee Quality of Services (QoS). In multi-beam satellite communication systems, multi-layer and multi-dimensional radio resources change dynamically, which leads to the discontinuity of optimal resources and the lack of mapping balance between packets and radio resources. To deal with these problems, we propose a cross-layer and cross-dimension radio resources optimization model based on the weighted discrete firefly algorithm and an adaptive packet segmentation scheme based on the irregular gradient algorithm. The cross-layer and cross-dimension radio resources optimization model based on the weighted discrete firefly algorithm simulates cross-layer and cross-dimension optimization for the high-dynamic and multi-dimensional radio resources by considering the channel state information (CSI) and QoS in the multi-beam satellite communication system. The optimal resources are taken as the weight of irregular gradient algorithm to segment packets and map packets to radio resources, which can realize the mapping balance between packets and radio resources and ensure the efficiency and reliability of communication. The simulations show that the new transmission scheme improves the normalized system throughput and user satisfaction index by 18.7% and 6.2%, respectively. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art in Satellite Communication Networks)

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15 pages, 53852 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Ku-Band Magnified Active Tx/Rx Multibeam Antenna Based on a Discrete Constrained Lens

by Gianfranco Ruggerini, Pasquale Giuseppe Nicolaci and Giovanni Toso

Electronics 2021, 10(22), 2824; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10222824 - 17 Nov 2021

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3055

Abstract

This paper presents the design, manufacturing, and testing of a Ku-band magnified active Tx/Rx multibeam antenna based on a discrete constrained lens. Multibeam antennas based on constrained lenses generate a significant number of beams on a large operative frequency bandwidth. The main novelty and challenge in this development are associated with the combined transmitting and receiving functionality of this active array. An innovative RF building blockchain working in dual-polarization and covering both the transmitting and receiving bandwidth is successfully implemented. In order to improve the accommodation constraints and the thermal control, the active lens is magnified by two confocal paraboloidal reflectors. To validate the design procedure, experimental results are compared with numerical ones. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art in Satellite Communication Networks)

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16 pages, 3844 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Ultra-Wideband Reconfigurable X-Band and Ku-Band Metasurface Beam-Steerable Reflector for Satellite Communications

by David Rotshild and Amir Abramovich

Electronics 2021, 10(17), 2165; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10172165 - 4 Sep 2021

Cited by 16 | Viewed by 3893

Abstract

A continuously reconfigurable metasurface reflector based on unit cell mushroom geometry that was integrated with a varactor diode is presented in this paper. The unit cell of the metasurface was designed and optimized to operate in the X-band and Ku-band, improving satellite communication’s quality of service. The losses mechanisms of continuous control over the unit cell phase reflection in beam steering resolution are considered and the analysis results are presented. The unit cell design parameters were analyzed with an emphasis on losses and dynamic reflection phase range. The unit cell magnitude and phase reflection are shown in the wide frequency bandwidth and showed a good agreement between all the measurements and the simulations. This metasurface enabled a high dynamic range in the unit cell resonant frequency range from 7.8 to 15 GHz. In addition, the reflection phase and absorption calibration are demonstrated for multiple operating frequencies, namely, 11 GHz, 12 GHz, and 13.5 GHz. Furthermore, design trade-offs and manufacturing limitations were considered. Finally, a beam-steering simulation using the designed metasurface is shown and discussed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art in Satellite Communication Networks)

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16 pages, 1210 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperEditor’s ChoiceArticle

Performance of Micro-Scale Transmission & Reception Diversity Schemes in High Throughput Satellite Communication Networks

by Apostolos Z. Papafragkakis, Charilaos I. Kouroriorgas and Athanasios D. Panagopoulos

Electronics 2021, 10(17), 2073; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10172073 - 27 Aug 2021

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2190

Abstract

The use of Ka and Q/V bands could be a promising solution in order to accommodate higher data rate, interactive services; however, at these frequency bands signal attenuation due to the various atmospheric phenomena and more particularly due to rain could constitute a serious limiting factor in system performance and availability. To alleviate this possible barrier, short- and large-scale diversity schemes have been proposed and examined in the past; in this paper a micro-scale site diversity system is evaluated in terms of capacity gain using rain attenuation time series generated using the Synthetic Storm Technique (SST). Input to the SST was 4 years of experimental rainfall data from two stations with a separation distance of 386 m at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) campus in Athens, Greece. Additionally, a novel multi-dimensional synthesizer based on Gaussian Copulas parameterized for the case of multiple-site micro-scale diversity systems is presented and evaluated. In all examined scenarios a significant capacity gain can be observed, thus proving that micro-scale site diversity systems could be a viable choice for enterprise users to increase the achievable data rates and improve the availability of their links. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art in Satellite Communication Networks)

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19 pages, 7567 KiB

Open AccessArticle

IoT OTH Maritime Surveillance Service over Satellite Network in Equatorial Environment: Analysis, Design and Deployment

by Ranko Petrovic, Dejan Simic, Zoran Cica, Dejan Drajic, Marko Nerandzic and Dejan Nikolic

Electronics 2021, 10(17), 2070; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10172070 - 27 Aug 2021

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2491

Abstract

This paper explores the challenges and constraints when over the horizon (OTH) maritime surveillance service utilizes an Internet of Things (IoT) as its backbone. The service is based on High Frequency Surface Wave Radars (HFSWRs) and relies on a satellite communication network as its communication infrastructure in harsh environments. The complete IoT OTH maritime surveillance network is currently deployed in the Gulf of Guinea, which due to its tropical climate represents an unfavorable environment for sensors and communications. In this paper, we have examined the service performance under various meteorological conditions specific to the Gulf of Guinea. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first analysis of IoT OTH maritime surveillance service in equatorial environment. Our analysis aims to mathematically describe the impact of harsh weather conditions on the performance of the service in order to mitigate it with careful overall system design and provide constant quality of the service. Analyses presented in the paper show that average service latency is about 90 s, but it can rise to about 120 s, which is used as a key information during the sensor data fusion algorithm design. Validity of the analyses is demonstrated through high quality of service with an outage probability of just 0.1% in the driest months up to the 0.7% in the rainiest months. The work presented here can be used as a guideline for deployment of maritime surveillance service solutions in other equatorial regions. Moreover, the gained experience presented in this paper will significantly facilitate future expansions of the existing maritime surveillance network with more HFSWRs. This will be done in such a way that it will not affect the quality of service of the entire system on a large scale. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art in Satellite Communication Networks)

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Review

Jump to: Editorial, Research

23 pages, 2754 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperReview

A Comprehensive Review of Channel Modeling for Land Mobile Satellite Communications

by Mauro Tropea and Floriano De Rango

Electronics 2022, 11(5), 820; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11050820 - 6 Mar 2022

Cited by 15 | Viewed by 5699

Abstract

As demands on the network continue to grow, it is increasingly important to upgrade the existing infrastructure in order to offer higher bandwidth and service level guarantees to users. Next generation networks (NGNs) represent a fully IP-based architecture that is able to support different technologies. In this context, the satellite networks are considered a fundamental part for future hybrid architectures. In this scenario, knowing satellite channel propagation characteristics in order to be able to design a communication system to respond to new user needs is of fundamental importance. Many papers in the literature show channel models in different satellite scenarios both for fixed and mobile applications; however, to the best of our knowledge, nobody presents an overview on different satellite models based on Markov chains. This paper wants to present a comprehensive review of the most recent developments in satellite channel communications related to mobile services and, in particular, for the land mobile satellite systems. The work presents all different types of Markov models, from single-state to multi-state models, that have been proposed in the literature from the early 1980s. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art in Satellite Communication Networks)

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