Towards 6G: Adaptive and Resilient Network Management for Hybrid Terrestrial-Satellite Systems

The digital divide remains one of the biggest challenges of the modern era, limiting access to information and global connectivity for populations in remote or rural regions. The doctoral research goes in the direction of an integrated approach to address the divide in the view of 6G. In particular, the integration of Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) and Terrestrial Networks (TN) is envisioned as a key part of the future 6G systems. Exploiting the Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) technology, we aim to propose an architecture for an adaptive and resilient network that can integrate satellite technologies such as Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks. Moreover, we present some results of using Reinforcement Learning (RL) in the tunnel selection problem for SD-WAN. In order to assess the performance of the LEO satellite, we are also collecting and analyzing real measurements using a Starlink connection. Finally, we propose some open questions in the field of integrating NTN/TN with SD-WAN.