Can 3GPP New Radio Non-Terrestrial Networks Meet the IMT-2020 Requirements for Satellite Radio Interface Technology?

TL;DR

This paper evaluates whether 3GPP NR non-terrestrial networks with low Earth orbit satellites can meet IMT-2020 5G requirements, focusing on throughput, capacity, and spectral efficiency through system simulations.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed assessment of IMT-2020 satellite radio interface requirements for 3GPP NR NTN using system simulations.

Findings

Downlink requirements met with 2 receive antennas

Frequency reuse factor 1 can outperform FRF3 in downlink with dual antennas

Uplink requirements satisfied with a single transmit antenna

Abstract

The International Telecommunication Union defined the requirements for 5G in the International Mobile Telecommunications 2020 (IMT-2020) standard in 2017. Since then, advances in technology and standardization have made the ubiquitous deployment of 5G via satellite a practical possibility, for example, in locations where terrestrial networks (TNs) are not available. However, it may be difficult for satellite networks to achieve the same performance as TNs. To address this, the IMT-2020 requirements for satellite radio interface technology have recently been established. In this paper, these requirements are evaluated through system simulations for the 3rd Generation Partnership Project New Radio non-terrestrial networks with a low Earth orbit satellite. The focus is on the throughput, area traffic capacity, and spectral efficiency requirements. It is observed that the downlink (DL) requirements can be met for user equipment with 2 receive antenna elements. The results also reveal that frequency reuse factor 1 (FRF1) may outperform FRF3 in DL with a dual-antenna setup, which is a surprising finding since FRF3 is typically considered to outperform FRF1 due to better interference reduction. For uplink (UL), 1 transmit antenna is sufficient to meet the requirements by a relatively large margin - a promising result given that UL is generally more demanding.