Efficient PLMN Selection in Regenerative Non-Terrestrial Network

The expectation to provide network coverage and services to all unserved remote areas and international areas by spaceborne vehicles and airborne vehicles is a new challenge for network operators. With emerging 5G New Radio (NR) technology, Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) along with Terrestrial Networks (TN) is seen as a solution that has the potential to meet the market requirements of offering services everywhere and all the time. 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has defined NTN as a network where space-borne or airborne vehicles act either as a relay node or as a base station and is actively working on standardizing the solution for satellite systems. One of its main objective is to come up with a network or satellite Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN) selection procedure that accommodates 5G systems using satellite Radio Access Network (RAN). In this paper, we propose a novel solution for Satellite PLMN selection for regenerative NTN that adopts the terrestrial PLMN selection procedures with no or minimal impacts. This proposal also aims at overcoming the limitations of existing solutions. The simulation results show that the time to get service is reduced by an average of around 56% when compared to existing algorithms for NTN PLMN selection.