Performance Analysis of LEO Satellite-Based IoT Networks in the Presence of Interference

This article presents a star-of-star topology for Internet of Things (IoT) networks using mega low-Earth-orbit constellations. The proposed topology enables IoT users to broadcast their sensed data to multiple satellites simultaneously over a shared channel, which is then relayed to the ground station (GS) using amplify-and-forward relaying. The GS coherently combines the signals from multiple satellites using maximal ratio combining. To analyze the performance of the proposed topology in the presence of interference, a comprehensive outage probability (OP) analysis is performed, assuming imperfect channel state information at the GS. This article employs stochastic geometry to model the random locations of satellites, making the analysis general and independent of any specific constellation. Furthermore, this article examines successive interference cancellation (SIC) and capture model (CM)-based decoding schemes at the GS to mitigate interference. The average OP for the CM-based scheme and the OP of the best user for the SIC scheme are derived analytically. This article also presents simplified expressions for the OP under a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) assumption, which are utilized to optimize the system parameters for achieving a target OP. The simulation results are consistent with the analytical expressions and provide insights into the impact of various system parameters, such as mask angle, altitude, number of satellites, and decoding order. The findings of this study demonstrate that the proposed topology can effectively leverage the benefits of multiple satellites to achieve the desired OP and enable burst transmissions without coordination among IoT users, making it an attractive choice for satellite-based IoT networks.