An adaptive routing algorithm for integrated information networks

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communication systems have evolved into a critical component of global broadband networks, enabling wide‐area connectivity, IoT services, and intelligent multilayer satellite–terrestrial integration. Despite rapid advancements in constellation deployment, routing mechanisms, resource management, and LEO–5G/6G convergence, the long‐term evolution of research themes and network architectures remains insufficiently mapped. This study analyzes 2420 Web of Science articles published between 1995 and 2025 and applies bibliometric techniques, main path analysis, and edge‐betweenness clustering to identify the core technological trajectories shaping the LEO communication domain. The results reveal five major phases of development: foundational constellation design, multilayer architecture integration, performance and QoS optimization, 6G‐driven intelligent connectivity, and secure collaborative networking. Four dominant research clusters emerge: communication and IoT applications, routing and topology management, satellite edge computing and task offloading, and LEO‐enhanced GNSS positioning, highlighting the field's structural diversification. Main path and key‐route analyses further show a gradual shift from traditional connectivity‐oriented engineering toward distributed, AI‐enabled, and security‐aware satellite communication frameworks. This study provides the first longitudinal mapping of LEO communication research, offering an integrated understanding of how architectural evolution, protocol innovation, and emerging intelligent services intersect. The findings support future advances in satellite networking, resource optimization, and the design of resilient and interoperable LEO systems.

With the emergence of cellular radio technology, there has been a renewal of interest in low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication networks. Interest in these type of systems is fuelled by reduced propagation delays compared to those experienced by geostationary satellites as well as the benefits associated with mobile and tetherless communications. LEO systems are presently being proposed to provide global communications for both voice and data applications. These systems are being designed to provide communications to areas of the world where either public telephone systems do not exist or cannot be provided due to terrain constraints. This paper examines the effects of packet-switched low-Earth orbit satellite systems as a medium for wireless communications. An overview of LEO systems is provided, as well as critical issues associated with the implementation of such a system. The benefits as well as the detriments to the implementation of LEO systems over other types of communication networks are addressed. To illustrate the nature of LEO communications, six representative constellations, varying in size from 36 to 77 satellites and residing at orbital altitudes ranging from 765 to 1549 kilometers, are examined.

Low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications are expected to be incorporated in future wireless networks to provide global wireless access with enhanced data rates. Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques, though widely used in terrestrial communication systems, have not been applied to LEO satellite communication systems. In this paper, we propose a massive MIMO downlink (DL) transmission scheme with full frequency reuse (FFR) for LEO satellite communication systems by exploiting statistical channel state information (sCSI) at the transmitter. We first establish a massive MIMO channel model for LEO satellite communications and propose Doppler and time delay compensation techniques at user terminals (UTs). Then, we develop a closed-form low-complexity sCSI based DL precoder by maximizing the average signal-to-leakage-plus-noise ratio (ASLNR). Motivated by the DL ASLNR upper bound, we further propose a space angle based user grouping algorithm to schedule the served UTs into different groups, where each group of UTs use the same time and frequency resource. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed massive MIMO transmission scheme with FFR significantly enhances the data rate of LEO satellite communication systems.

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communication networks have become an important means to provide internet access services for areas with limited infrastructure. Compared with the Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) satellites, the LEO satellites have limited on-board communication caching and calculating resources. Furthermore, the distribution of traffic requests is dynamically changing and uneven due to the relative movement between the LEO satellites and the ground. Therefore, how to schedule the multi-dimensional resources is an important issue for the LEO satellite communication networks. Beam-hopping is an efficient approach to improve the resource utilization by dynamically allocating time, power, and frequency according to the traffic requests. This paper proposes an efficient multi-dimensional resource allocation mechanism for beam-hopping in LEO satellite networks, which simultaneously satisfies the GEO interference avoidance. First, we construct the beam-hopping model of LEO satellites, and formulate the resource optimization problem. Second, we provide the weighted greedy strategy to determine the illumination pattern. In order to reduce the search space, the cells are clustered to non-interference clusters. Then, an improved genetic algorithm is provided to jointly allocate the communication resources. Finally, we construct various simulations to evaluate our proposed mechanism. Compared with the random-BH, polling-BH and traditional genetic algorithm, our algorithm achieves better performance in terms of both system throughput, access success rate, average delay and fairness between cells. The performance improvement is more significant in scenarios where traffic demand is unevenly distributed.

This work develops an analytical framework for downlink low Earth orbit (LEO) or medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellite communications, leveraging tools from stochastic geometry. We propose a tractable approach to the analysis of such satellite communication systems, accounting for the fact that satellites are located on circular orbits. We accurately incorporate this geometric property of LEO or MEO satellite constellations by developing a Cox point process model that jointly produces orbits and satellites on these orbits. Our work contrasts with previous modeling studies that presumed satellite locations to be entirely random, thereby overlooking the fundamental fact that satellites are jointly positioned on orbits. Employing this Cox model, we analyze the network performance experienced by users located on Earth. Specifically, we evaluate the no-satellite probability of the proposed network and the Laplace transform of the interference created by such a network. Using it, we compute its SIR (signalto-interference) distribution, namely its coverage probability. By presenting fundamental network performance as functions of key parameters, this model allows one to assess the statistical properties of downlink LEO or MEO satellite communications and can thus be used as a system-level design tool to operate and optimize forthcoming complex LEO or MEO satellite networks.

A hybrid multibeamforming receiver for low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication in the Ku-band is designed and tested. The proposed receiver is implemented with eight channels to enable multibeam control. The proposed receiver, including both analog and digital beamforming structures, is capable of multibeam reception using both analog and digital beamforming techniques simultaneously or selectively. Analog beamforming is implemented by employing a local oscillator phase shifter using direct digital synthesis and phase-locked loop (PLL) structures. In digital beamforming, a software-defined radio can control the phase of the signal in the digital baseband. The multibeam received using the proposed hybrid multibeamforming receiver was measured at 11.7 GHz and 12.7 GHz in an anechoic chamber. The phase-control resolutions of analog and digital beamforming were 0.022° and 0.72°, respectively. Analog beam-switching speed is slower than digital beamforming because it depends on the settling time of the PLL circuit, but it has a high phase-control resolution. Therefore, by using analog and digital beamforming when precise beam tilting and fast beam switching are required, respectively, the proposed hybrid multibeamforming is shown to be suitable in accordance with the communication situation.

We investigate a topological design and routing problem for low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication networks where each satellite can have a limited number of direct inter-satellite links (ISLs) to a subset of satellites within its line-of-sight. First, we model LEO satellite network as a FSA (finite state automaton) using satellite constellation information. Second, we solve a combined topological design and routing problem for each configuration corresponding to a state in the FSA. The topological design (or link assignment) problem deals with the selection of ISLs, and the routing problem handles the traffic distribution over the selected links to maximize the number of carried calls. This NP-complete mixed integer optimization problem is solved by a two-step heuristic algorithm that first solves the topological design problem, and then finds the optimal routing. The algorithm is iterated using the simulated annealing technique until the near-optimal solution is found. The link assignment table and the routing table that are pre-calculated off-line for each state are loaded into the satellites and a new set of these tables are retrieved at each state transition. The simulation result shows that the proposed method is applicable to practical LEO satellite networks.

This letter proposes a graph-based satellite handover framework for the low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication networks. In order to maintain the connection with the communicating counterpart, the user has to switch between consecutive satellites covering the very user. A directed graph with covering period of the satellite as its node, and the link representing the possible handover between two overlapping periods, is calculated in advance, and then, the satellite handover process can be viewed as finding a path in the directed graph. By setting the link weight according to different handover criterions, the graph-based framework can support a variety of satellite handover strategies, which shows the improved flexibility over the existing research. The application of the framework to find the shortest handover path conducted on two typical LEO satellite networks, viz., Iridium and Globalstar, also corroborates the effectiveness of the proposed handover framework.

Aiming at the problems of high dynamic topology and limited on-board resources in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks leading to poor performance of traditional routing algorithms, this paper combines the centralized control idea of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) with the collective learning ability of the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm to propose an adaptive potential field routing algorithm based on PSO. This algorithm models the network as a dynamic potential field, defines potential energy based on the cumulative congestion degree to guide data packet transmission; adaptively learns and optimizes link cost weights through the PSO mechanism, achieving dynamic evolution of the path evaluation criterion; and adopts a probability-based multi-path forwarding mechanism to achieve load balancing. Simulation results show that compared to traditional algorithms such as Dijkstra and ACO (Ant Colony Optimization), this algorithm significantly improves performance in terms of average end-to-end delay, network throughput, and load balancing, especially suitable for dynamic traffic scenarios.

International organizations such as the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) regard non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) as an essential component of the sixth-generation (6G) mobile communication technology and have advanced relevant standardization efforts. Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication (SatCom) constitutes a key part of NTNs, and efficient uplink random access (RA) is crucial for establishing initial connections in LEO SatCom systems. However, the long propagation delay and wide coverage of LEO satellites substantially increase access latency and collision probability due to the limited number of beams and their constrained coverage areas. In addition, the highly non-uniform spatial distribution of user equipment (UE) further aggravates access inefficiency. To this end, this paper investigates joint beam position grouping and RA channel (RACH) occasions (ROs) allocation (JBPGRA) for LEO SatCom systems. Specifically, we develop a system model for RA under beam hopping and identify the key factors that influence RA performance. Furthermore, we derive expressions for both the instantaneous signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and the average SINR under a given non-uniform UE spatial distribution. Building on this analysis, the JBPGRA problem is formulated as an integer linear programming problem that seeks to maximize RA success while conserving RO resources under non-uniform UE distribution. To achieve a practical solution, we propose an efficient JBPGRA algorithm composed of beam position classification, sparse beam position grouping, and RO allocation modules. Simulation results demonstrate that, under the same UE density, the proposed JBPGRA scheme achieves over 29% higher access success rate in dense beam positions compared with the uniform baseline adopted in existing SatCom systems, while reducing RO consumption by more than 49% and decreasing the number of beam position groups by over 57%.

This paper extends previous research efforts related to the simulation performance modelling and analysis of satellite communication networks. Specifically, the use of low earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks for personal communications is examined. Six different satellite constellation configurations are investigated in a packet-switched operating environment. Performance metrics examined are the end-to-end packet delay and the utilization of satellite channels in the dynamic environment. Realistic and accurate models of the physical satellite network and its terrestrial transmitters require that numerous operating characteristics and assumptions be specified. These are based on proposed design requirements of commercial systems, such as Iridium. Via the use of simulation, we show the relative delay and utilization performance of differing satellite network architectures. From these simulation models, mathematical metamodels are derived for the system delays. These innovative models are used to predict the delay performance of different network architectures not previously simulated. Comparison of these metamodels with simulation results show that metamodels provide an accurate means for performance prediction. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Beam hopping (BH) has become one key technology for satellite communications due to its superior flexibility and efficient resource utilization. In order to balance the service latency of different users when BH is employed in low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication systems, the objective of this paper is to minimize the maximum queuing delay among users by dynamically scheduling beams and allocating power among beams. The considered problem is a mixed-integer programming problem, and therefore is first transformed into two sub-problems, i.e., user selection and power allocation. Then, a two-stage low-delay algorithm is proposed in consideration of both the total transmit power constraint and traffic requirements. Simulation results indicate that the proposed algorithm can significantly reduce the maximum delay among users in each BH period compared to the existing algorithms.

Thanks to its long-range, low-power characteristics, the LoRa modulation technique is being increasingly adopted for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communications with the Internet of Things (IoT) remote node terminals. However, with satellites reaching speeds of around $7.8 \mathrm{~km} / \mathrm{s}$, the LoRa symbols experience a frequency shift due to the Doppler effect which could result in packet loss. This study examines three linear models for evaluating the accumulated Doppler effect in a sequence of LoRa symbols, with a focus on higher spreading factors. The results demonstrate the maximum number of successfully received symbols without error caused by the cumulative Doppler shift per packet for different LoRa configurations, providing initial metrics for mitigation techniques and emphasizing the need for careful consideration of packet length in this communication scenario. Additionally, it was found that the difference in the predicted position of the first error symbol due to accumulated Doppler shift among the three models does not exceed one symbol unity.

In this paper, we consider the sparse code multiple access (SCMA) for low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications to achieve high user capacity and provide technical support for satellite-based Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Note that Doppler shift in the LEO satellite link can not be ignored and the message passing algorithm (MPA) extensively utilized by SCMA is quite time-consuming due to high complexity. Thus we propose a coherent iterative receiver with low complexity for SCMA-based LEO satellite communication systems. First, we design a data-aided carrier synchronization scheme using multiple disjoint pilot blocks to estimate the Doppler shift precisely. Then, a soft-out approximate message passing (SO-AMP) algorithm with linear complexity is derived from the first-order approximation of MPA based on a novel framework of SCMA mapper. Further, a damping method is introduced into the SO-AMP detector developing a damped SO-AMP (DSO- AMP) to improve the overall performance. Numerical results show that the designed receiver can achieve excellent performance close to ideal performance with no Doppler shift while maintaining low complexity.

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communication systems have emerged as a critical solution to address the growing demand for global, seamless, and low-latency connectivity. Compared with Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) satellites, LEO satellites enable reduced signal delays and broad coverage. Therefore, they are particularly suitable for remote and underserved regions. This paper provides a comprehensive review of LEO satellite communication systems, focusing on three major aspects: frequency band division, system architecture, and case analysis. The study explores the utilization of various frequency bands, including L, S, C, X, Ku, Ka, Q, and V bands, highlighting their characteristics and applications. The system architecture, including the space, user, and ground segments, is analyzed in detail. Additionally, the paper examines the Starlink constellation as a typical example and discusses its architecture, performance, and coverage capabilities. However, LEO satellite communication systems face significant challenges, such as limited resources, high costs, and problems due to the high speed of satellites. Therefore, advancements in artificial intelligence, ultra-narrow beamforming, and 5G and 6G networks present promising opportunities for future development.