A User-Centric Handover Scheme for Ultra-Dense LEO Satellite Networks

In recent years, low earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks (LSNs) have attracted increasing attention due to economic prospect and advantages in high bandwidth and low latency. In order to provide higher quality of service (QoS) and address the frequent handover problem among LEO satellites, we propose a user-centric handover scheme for ultra-dense LSNs in this letter. Our basic idea is to exploit satellite's storage capability to improve user's communication quality. By buffering user's downlink data in multiple satellites simultaneously, the terrestrial user can realize seamless handover and always access the satellite with the best link quality. Simulation results show that our user-centric handover scheme outperforms the traditional handover scheme in terms of throughput, handover delay and end-to-end latency.