A Study on the Scalability and Feasibility of the Space-air Integrated Network

A key technology in 6G mobile communications is the integration of space and aerial networks. It is a fundamental enabler that provides global coverage for a wide range of applications that require high availability and high resilience. Beyond conceptual system design, many studies discuss how aerial or public networks can efficiently support terrestrial networks. This paper discusses how many users a space-to-air network can serve in an isolated network environment without terrestrial backbone support and which backhaul links are bottlenecks. Based on the recommendation of design parameters of the 3GPP standard, this paper briefly analyzes the path capacity and coverage of a generalized space-to-air network. Through numerical analysis, we confirm that UAV base station altitude is a key factor in improving network performance and supporting close networks.