Outage Performance of Multi-UAV Relaying-based Imperfect Hardware Hybrid Satellite-Terrestrial Networks

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the outage performance of a hybrid satellite-terrestrial network with multiple UAV relays, considering hardware impairments and stochastic mobility, providing insights into system reliability under various channel conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive model for imperfect hardware and stochastic UAV mobility, deriving outage probability expressions for hybrid networks with diverse channel models.

Findings

Outage probability increases with hardware impairments.

UAV mobility impacts system reliability significantly.

Analytical results match simulation outcomes.

Abstract

In this paper, we consider an imperfect hardware hybrid satellite-terrestrial network (HSTN) where the satellite communication with a ground user equipment (UE) is aided by the multiple amplify-and-forward (AF) three-dimensional ($3$D) mobile unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) relays. Herein, we consider that all transceiver nodes are corrupted by the radio frequency hardware impairments (RFHI). Further, a stochastic mixed mobility (MM) model is employed to characterize the instantaneous location of $3$D mobile UAV relays in a cylindrical cell with UE lying at its center on ground plane. Taking into account the aggregate RFHI model for satellite and UAV relay transceivers and the random $3$D distances-based path loss for UAV relay-UE links, we investigate the outage probability (OP) and corresponding asymptotic outage behaviour of the system under an opportunistic relay selection scheme in a unified form for shadowed-Rician satellite links' channels and Nakagami-\emph{m} as well as Rician terrestrial links' channels. We corroborate theoretical analysis by simulations.