Beamforming in LEO Constellations for NB-IoT Services in 6G Communications

Abstract: With the first commercializations of 5G networks, Beyond 5G (B5G), or 6G, systems are starting to be defined. In this context, Internet of Things (IoT) services will be even more impactful with respect to 5G systems. In order to cope with the huge amount of IoT devices, and the potentially large capacity requirements for the most advanced of them (e.g., live camera feeds from first responders in emergency scenarios), non-terrestrial systems will be pivotal to assist and complement the terrestrial networks. In this paper, we propose a multi-layer non-terrestrial architecture for NarrowBand-IoT (NB-IoT) services based on Geosynchronous Orbit (GSO) and Non GSO (NGSO) nodes. To cope with both the number of devices and the potentially large capacities, we propose to implement Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) beamforming in an aggressive full frequency reuse scenario. The performance assessment shows the significant benefits of the proposed solution.