Optimality Analysis and Efficient Scheduling for Massive IoT-LEO Satellite Networks

As one of the key enabler technologies of 6G, low earth orbit (LEO) satellites can provide ubiquitous coverage and seamless connectivity for data gathering for remote areas. In this paper, we consider an optimization problem of data transmission from numerous Internet of Things (IoT) terminals to LEO satellites. A large amount of IoT-to-LEO links to be connected could render a heavy-loaded scenario which may result in longer waiting time and lower throughput. Thus, with limited resources and a certain duration of a visible LEO, it is important to properly schedule the massive links to avoid interference and timely complete the transmission task. To solve this problem, we develop a scheduling algorithm to enable efficient data transmission, such that more IoT terminals can be connected and more data can be transmitted. The numerical results show that the developed suboptimal algorithm can largely reduce computational time compared to high-complexity algorithms, and achieve less optimality loss compared to other low-complexity benchmark schemes.