Double-edge intelligent integrated satellite terrestrial networks

The efficient integration of satellite and terrestrial networks has become an important component for 6G wireless architectures to provide highly reliable and secure connectivity over a wide geographical area. As the satellite and cellular networks are developed separately these years, the integrated network should synergize the communication, storage, computation capabilities of both sides towards an intelligent system more than mere consideration of coexistence. This has motivated us to develop double-edge intelligent integrated satellite and terrestrial networks (DILIGENT). Leveraging the boost development of multi-access edge computing (MEC) technology and artificial intelligence (AI), the framework is entitled with the systematic learning and adaptive network management of satellite and cellular networks. In this article, we provide a brief review of the state-of-art contributions from the perspective of academic research and standardization. Then we present the overall design of the proposed DILIGENT architecture, where the advantages are discussed and summarized. Strategies of task offloading, content caching and distribution are presented. Numerical results show that the proposed network architecture outperforms the existing integrated networks.