Stochastic Analysis of Satellite Broadband by Mega-Constellations with Inclined LEOs

TL;DR

This paper develops analytical models to evaluate coverage and data rates of inclined LEO satellite constellations, aiding design choices for broadband connectivity in remote areas.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analytical framework that accounts for general fading and provides a new effective satellite number parameter for performance assessment.

Findings

Derived expressions for coverage probability and data rate.

Introduced the effective number of satellites parameter.

Provided insights into optimal constellation parameter selection.

Abstract

As emerging massive constellations are intended to provide seamless connectivity for remote areas using hundreds of small low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, new methodologies have great importance to study the performance of these networks. In this paper, we derive both downlink and uplink analytical expressions for coverage probability and data rate of an inclined LEO constellation under general fading, regardless of exact satellites' positions. Our solution involves two phases as we, first, abstract the network into a uniformly distributed network. Secondly, we obtain a new parameter, effective number of satellites, for every user's latitude which compensates for the performance mismatch between the actual and uniform constellations. In addition to exact derivation of the network performance metrics, this study provides insight into selecting the constellation parameters, e.g., the total number of satellites, altitude, and inclination angle.