Distance Aware Radio Planning for SDN Based 5G-Satellite Network

Satellite component will inevitably hold a substantial role in the emerging 5G-Satellite network context, performing ubiquitous coverage, content distribution in addition to spectrum utilization improvement. In this paper, we introduce Software Defined Network (SDN) solution in order to address satellite radio planning strategy according to satellite movement around the earth. Indeed, continuous satellite movement, may exhibit significant spatial inhomogeneity among different areas belonging to the same satellite footprint, leading to high propagation delay in addition to disadvantageous propagation conditions. SDN for next generation networks, is introduced to propose a link adaptation process aware in advance radio channel conditions. So, based on link budget characteristics of the area covered by the satellite footprint, the SDN controller will determine the appropriate radio planning, which could be in term of ground base stations deployment or in term of bandwidth allocation for each spot-beam. This deployment depends directly on the physical bit rate and hence on the radio conditions in term of SINR (Signal to Noise Interference ratio) and propagation delay. Our proposal was tested for different radio environments in order to overcome the satellite link variation.