Closing the Performance and Management Gaps with Satellite Internet: Challenges, Approaches, and Future Directions

TL;DR

This paper discusses the challenges and potential solutions for satellite Internet, focusing on performance and management gaps, and explores future research directions to improve connectivity and operational efficiency.

Contribution

It identifies key gaps in satellite Internet deployment and reviews approaches and future directions to address these challenges.

Findings

Performance gaps hinder reliable end-to-end connectivity.

Management gaps affect efficient satellite network operations.

Research directions include innovative solutions for performance and management issues.

Abstract

Recent advancements in low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites represented by large constellations and advanced payloads provide great promises for enabling beyond 5G and 6G telecommunications and high-quality and ubiquitous Internet connectivity to everyone anywhere on Earth. LEO satellite networks are envisioned to bridge the urban-rural connectivity gap for the digital divide. However, the digital divide can hardly be closed by only providing connectivity to rural and remote areas. Various unprecedented challenges brought by the emerging satellite Internet still need to be resolved, such as inconsistent end-to-end performance guarantees and a lack of efficient management and operations in these areas, which are referred to as "performance gap" and "management gap", respectively. This position paper will briefly discuss these gaps, approaches to addressing the gaps, and some research directions based on our recent works.