Vertical Handover Scheme Evaluation for GOVSATCOM Systems

The European Governmental Satellite Communications (EU GOVSATCOM) program aims to federate European satellite operators and integrate their systems with 5G terrestrial networks to improve mission-critical services. This paper investigates the Vertical Handover (VHO) between Terrestrial Networks (TN) and Non-Terrestrial-Networks (NTN) and proposes a scheme suitable for the experimentation of the trial phase of the 5G-GOVSATCOM project. A suitable model has been identified for analyzing the VHO scheme, taking into account the effect of shadowing correlation. Suitable SINR-based VHO triggering conditions have been identified. The VHO performance has been evaluated using key performance indicators (i.e., VHO failure rate and VHO ping-pong rate), identifying the settings that meet the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements.