Cooperative diversity performance of hybrid satellite and terrestrial millimeter wave backhaul 5G networks

Abstract

Cooperative diversity between satellite and terrestrial networks is an effective technique to increase the availability of satellite communications under fading conditions. The integration of satellite communications in 5th Generation mobile networks gives the advantage of a very high coverage area. However, the increased demand for bandwidth at backhaul links has led to the employment of millimeter wave frequencies, where the dominant fading mechanism is rain attenuation. In this paper, the end-to-end outage performance analysis of a satellite-terrestrial cooperative diversity system operating at frequencies above 10 GHz is presented, employing spatially correlated lognormal fading channels. The destination node (e.g. Base Station of 5G access network) combines the direct satellite link signal with a signal received through a terrestrial regenerative (decode-and-forward) relay using the Selection Combining technique. Extended numerical results present the impact of various operational, geometrical and geographical parameters on the system performance.