Evaluation of hybrid terrestrial-satellite suburban wireless mesh backhauls for LTE networks

The development of 5G networks supposes a big challenge for mobile operators in order to satisfy the ambitious objective of delivering broadband services ubiquitously. Based on this, the increasing capabilities of satellite systems have created the consensus that such systems can satisfy the required necessities for several scenarios, such as for rural or low-density populated areas. Used in combination with a terrestrial wireless backhaul, satellite backhauls are envisaged as a solution to improve the network efficiency in terms of delivered traffic to access nodes while increasing its resiliency for the mentioned scenarios. This paper presents i) our ns-3 framework for modeling hybrid terrestrial-satellite mesh backhaul networks that carry LTE traffic and ii) a comparison of our different backpressure-based approaches against generic shortest-path routing in a low-density suburban scenario for LTE networks. Simulation results reveal the advantages of backpressure-based approaches to make an efficient use of the network resources while integrating seamlessly both terrestrial and satellite backhaul resources.