Hybrid Multiple Access Transmission in Satellite-Aerial-Terrestrial Networks

This letter proposes a hybrid multiple access (HMA) scheme to provide reliable connectivity for heterogeneous users in a satellite-aerial-terrestrial network (SATN). Here, multiple internet-of-things devices access a multi-antenna aerial platform through space division multiple access (SDMA) technology while the aerial platform and the earth station communicate with the satellite using uplink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA). Considering perfect and imperfect successive interference cancellation (SIC) at the satellite, we derive the closed-form ergodic sum rate (ESR) expression for the uplink transmission with the proposed HMA scheme, which is verified through Monte Carlo simulations. Besides, the priority of the proposed scheme is also demonstrated to some benchmarks in terms of ESR.