Future Challenges and Opportunities for Satellite Communications in the New Space Age

Abstract

In recent years, the interest in satellite communications (SatComs) has been rekindled as a result of technology improvements and private investments and enterprises. There are a lot of exciting open research questions in SatComs that need to be addressed in this survey. We then go into great detail into five different parts of the subject: the system itself, air interfaces, media accesses (such as fiber), networking (such as Ethernet), and testbeds and prototyping (such as USB). Finally, a list of potential future problems and their associated open research questions is provided.

As commercial 5G mobile communication systems have begun to appear, the integration of satellite communication with 5G systems has gained attention in the industry. Integration and conversion of communication protocols are the initial considerations when integrating two communication systems. Satellite and 5G communication protocols have yet to be fully integrated. This study proposes a novel protocol stack model from the perspective of protocol system integration and achieves integration at the protocol level by evaluating the differences and features of satellite and 5G communication protocols. Network deployment may be divided into three types based on the features of the various network applications. Finally, the satellite communication and 5G integration use cases are shown.

Index Term’s: space-based data collection, 5G integration, non-terrestrial networks, satellite communications, Antenna.