Civil Aircraft Assisted Space-Air-Ground Integrated Networks: An Innovative NTN of 5G and Beyond

To realize global coverage of 5G, non-terrestrial networks (NTN) is proposed as an vital solution. Satellite based NTN has high communication latency and limited performance. Aerial NTN needs to launch too many airborne communication platforms, which is expensive. Aiming at the problems existing in the classic NTN architecture, civil aircraft assisted space-air-ground integrated network (CAA-SAGIN) is proposed. CAA-SAGIN consists of civil aircrafts and satellites. Civil aircrafts carry airborne base stations, which provide services for users along the route while carrying out tasks. CAA-SAGIN ensures the global coverage of the network, and uses civil aircrafts to provide high throughput and low latency services for hot spot areas. Through the coverage analysis and link budget, the full coverage of CAA-SAGIN for hot spot areas and the reduction of transmission loss are determined. Finally, as an inspiration, the open issues and challenges in the new architecture are summarized.