Relay-Aided D2D MIMO Scheme (RAS) for Achieving Energy Efficiency in Satellite-Air-Ground Integrated Networks (SAGIN) Schéma D2D MIMO assisté par relais (RAS) pour atteindre l’efficacité énergétique dans les réseaux intégrés satellite-air-sol (SAGIN)

Space-air-ground integrated network (SAGIN), as a three-tiered architecture that assimilates satellite systems, aerial, and terrestrial communication networks, has become an intensive research domain in the present era of communications. SAGIN-based communication models are developed to enhance the user’s quality of experience (QoE). Besides providing noteworthy benefits in various applications and services, SAGIN has unprecedented challenges because of its self-organized, unpredictable, and heterogeneous nature. Relaying equipment in SAGIN can be a very low-orbit satellite, a base station (BS), and an unmanned vehicle assisting a pair of mobile users’ communications. Thus, developing a robust device-to-device (D2D) direct and relaying communication model concerning channel distribution is crucial. Based on this concern, this article proposes a relay-aided D2D multiple–input and multiple–output (MIMO) scheme (RAS) for enhancing the optimal energy efficiency (EE) as a function of spectral efficiency (SE). The proposed model derives a relay-based amplify-and-forward (AF) MIMO multihop communication system for implementation. The proposed computations of optimal EE and SE for D2D MIMO show that the approximation provided by a random matrix approximation is constrained to a specific signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) range when the optimal SE and EE are derived using Gaussian quadrature and a hypergeometric function.