Shared access satellite-terrestrial reconfigurable backhaul network enabled by smart antennas at mm-wave band

Abstract

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.5G traffic expectations require not only the appropriate access infrastructure, but also the corresponding backhaul infrastructure to ensure a well-balanced network scaling. Optical fibre and terrestrial wireless backhaul will hardly meet 100% coverage and satellite must be considered within the 5G infrastructure to boost ubiquitous and reliable network utilization. This work presents the main outcomes of SANSA project, which proposes a novel solution that overcomes the limitations of the traditional fixed backhaul. It is based on a dynamic integrated satelliteterrestrial backhaul network operating on the mm-wave band. Its key principles are a seamless integration of the satellite segment into terrestrial backhaul networks; a terrestrial wireless network capable of reconfiguring its topology according to traffic demands; and an aggressive frequency reuse within the terrestrial segment and between terrestrial and satellite segments. The two technological enablers of SANSA are smart antenna techniques at mm-wave and a software defined intelligent hybrid network management. This article introduces these 5G enablers, which permit satellite communications to play a key role in different 5G use cases, from the early deployment of 5G services in sparse scenarios to enhanced mobile broadband in denser scenarios.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft