Space-Terrestrial Radio Network Integration for IoT

Satellites operated in L/S satellite frequency bands can provide global coverage for Internet of Things (IoT) services with relatively smaller propagation loss and simpler antenna requirements. Satellite IoT networks and terrestrial IoT networks will be complementary parts of future 5G and 6G mobile cellular networks to enable fully seamless and resilient IoT services. Designing a backward compatible air interface with minimal changes with respect to existing terrestrial solutions is of paramount importance towards achieving the seamless mobility. This paper will introduce key system aspects by example of 3GPP Narrow-Band IoT (NB-IoT) air interface for Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN). In particular, the system design challenges will be investigated and the performance impact with design tradeoffs will be evaluated.