Outage Performance of Multi-UAV Relaying-based Imperfect Hardware Hybrid Satellite-Terrestrial Networks

Abstract: In this paper, we consider an imperfect hardware hybrid satellite-terrestrial network (HSTN) where the satellite communication with a ground user equipment (UE) is aided by the multiple amplify-and-forward (AF) three-dimensional ($3$D) mobile unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) relays. Herein, we consider that all transceiver nodes are corrupted by the radio frequency hardware impairments (RFHI). Further, a stochastic mixed mobility (MM) model is employed to characterize the instantaneous location of $3$D mobile UAV relays in a cylindrical cell with UE lying at its center on ground plane. Taking into account the aggregate RFHI model for satellite and UAV relay transceivers and the random $3$D distances-based path loss for UAV relay-UE links, we investigate the outage probability (OP) and corresponding asymptotic outage behaviour of the system under an opportunistic relay selection scheme in a unified form for shadowed-Rician satellite links' channels and Nakagami-\emph{m} as well as Rician terrestrial links' channels. We corroborate theoretical analysis by simulations.