Future 5G mobile communication systems are expected to integrate different radio access technologies including the satellite component. Within the 5G framework, the terrestrial services can be augmented with the development of High Throughput Satellite (HTS) systems and new mega constellations meeting 5G requirements, such as high bandwidth, low latency, increased coverage, including rural areas, air, and seas. This paper provides an overview of the current 5G initiatives and projects followed by a proposed architecture for 5G satellite networks where the SDN/NFV approach facilitates the integration with the 5G terrestrial system. In addition, a novel technique based on network coding is analyzed for the joint exploitation of multiple paths in such integrated satelliteterrestrial system. For TCP-based applications, an analytical model is presented to achieve an optimal traffic split between terrestrial and satellite paths and optimal redundancy levels.

Satellite systems represent a significant solution to provide communication services to mobile users in under-populated regions, in emergency areas, on planes, trains, and ships. In all these cases, satellite systems have unique capabilities in terms of robustness, wide area coverage, and broadcast/multicast capabilities. This paper surveys current mobile satellite networks and services from different standpoints, encompassing research issues, recent standardization advances (e.g. mobile extension for DVB-S2/-RCS, DVB-SH) and some operational systems (e.g. Globalstar, Inmarsat BGAN, Iridium, and Thuraya). The last part of this paper is devoted to qualitative and quantitative comparisons of the different mobile satellite systems to understand their characteristics in terms of services, capacity, resource utilization efficiency, and user mobility degree

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To meet an increasing demand for multimedia services and electronic connectivity across the world, satellite networks will play an indispensable role in the deployment of global networks. A number of satellite communication systems have been proposed using geosynchronous (GEO) satellites, medium earth orbit (MEO) and low earth orbit (LEO) constellations operating in the Ka-band and above. At these frequencies satellite networks are able to provide broadband services requiring wider bandwidth than the current services at C or Ku-band. Most of the next generation broadband satellite systems will use ATM or "ATM like" switching with onboard processing to provide full two-way services to and from earth stations. The new services gaining momentum include mobile services, private intranets and high data rate internet access carried over integrated satellite-fiber networks. Several performance issues need to be addressed before a transport layer protocol, like TCP can satisfactorily work over satellite ATM for large delay-bandwidth networks. In this paper, we review the proposed satellite systems and discuss challenges such as, traffic management and QoS requirements for broadband satellite ATM networks. The performance results of TCP enhancements for Unspecified Bit Rate over ATM (ATM-UBR+) for large bandwidth-delay environments with various end system policies and drop policies for several buffer sizes are presented.

SUMMARYFuture mobile networks are expected to involve systems that are based on different technologies, such as WiFi, WiMAX, 2G/3G/3G1, LTE, and satellite. To address this scenario, ITU has defined integrated and hybrid networks in the framework of Next-Generation Networks. The interest is to exploit the cooperation of different wireless communication systems (segments) to provide service to mobile users in the most efficient way, taking into account signal quality (coverage), traffic congestion conditions, and cost issues. Integrated and hybrid networks have the potential to be an efficient and cost-effective solution to employ satellite communications for mobile users. In the view of this, our paper focuses on the design of integrated/hybrid systems taking into account physical, MAC, and network layers issues. System examples and standards are described as well. Then, cooperative diversity techniques and traffic engineering issues for overflow traffic are discussed. This paper concludes identifying some possible future trends.

SUMMARYThe future media rich applications such as media streaming, content delivery distribution and broadband access require a network infrastructure that offers greater bandwidth and service level guarantees. As the demand for new applications increases, 'best effort' service is inadequate and results in lack of user satisfaction. End-to-end quality of service (QoS) requires the functional co-operation of all network layers. To meet future application requirements, satellite is an excellent candidate due to features such as global coverage, bandwidth flexibility, broadcast, multicast and reliability. At each layer, the user performance requirements should be achieved by implementation of efficient bandwidth allocation algorithms and satellite link impairment mitigation techniques.In this paper, a QoS framework for satellite IP networks including requirements, objectives and mechanisms are described. To fully understand end-to-end QoS at each layer, QoS parameters and the current research are surveyed. For example at physical layer (modulation, adaptive coding), link layer (bandwidth allocation), network layer (IntServ/DiffServ, MPLS traffic engineering), transport layer (TCP enhancements, and alternative transport protocols) and security issues are discussed. Some planned system examples, QoS simulations and experimental results are provided. The paper also includes the current status of the standardization of satellite IP by ETSI, ITU and IETF organizations.

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SUMMARYSatellite links are expected to be one important component of the next-generation Internet. New satellite system architectures are being envisaged to be fully IP based and support digital video broadcasting and return channel protocols (e.g. DVB-S, DVB-S2 and DVB-RCS). To make the upcoming satellite network systems fully realizable, meeting new services and application requirements, a complete system optimization is needed spanning the different layers of the OSI, and TCP/IP protocol stack. This paper deals with the cross-layer approach to be adopted in novel satellite systems and architectures. Different cross-layer techniques will be discussed, addressing the interactions among application, transport, MAC and physical layers. The impacts of these techniques will be investigated and numerical examples dealing with the joint optimization of different transport control schemes and lower layers will be considered referring to a geostationary-based architecture. Our aim is to prove that the interaction of different layers can permit to improve the higher-layer goodput as well as user satisfaction.