Improvement of the Global Connectivity using Integrated Satellite-Airborne-Terrestrial Networks with Resource Optimization

TL;DR

This paper introduces an integrated satellite-airborne-terrestrial network scheme that optimizes resource allocation and HAP locations to significantly improve ground user throughput, combining short-term and long-term optimization strategies.

Contribution

It presents a novel two-stage optimization framework for resource allocation and HAP placement in integrated networks, with low complexity solutions and an efficient recursive algorithm.

Findings

Enhanced user throughput through optimized resource allocation.

Effective HAP placement improves network performance.

Proven advantages via numerical simulations.

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel wireless scheme that integrates satellite, airborne, and terrestrial networks aiming to support ground users. More specifically, we study the enhancement of the achievable users' throughput assisted with terrestrial base stations, high altitude platforms (HAPs), and satellite station. The goal is to optimize the resource allocations and the HAPs locations in order to maximize the users' throughput. In this context, we propose to solve the optimization problem in two stages; first a short-term stage and then a long-term stage. In the short-term stage, we start by proposing a near optimal solution and low complexity solution to solve the associations and power allocations. In the first solution, we formulate and solve a binary linear optimization problem to find the best associations and then using Taylor expansion approximation to optimally determine the power allocations. While in the second solution, we propose a low complexity approach based on frequency partitioning technique to solve the associations and power allocations. One the other hand, in the long-term stage, we optimize the locations of the HAPs by proposing an efficient algorithm based on a recursive shrink-and-realign process. Finally, selected numerical results show the advantages provided by our proposed optimization scheme.