From Universe to Metaverse: IRS-Assisted Efficient Transmission for Hybrid Earth-Moon Network

To fulfill the requirements of human lunar exploration programs and establish bases on the moon in the distant future, lunar sensors (LSs) will inevitably produce a significant amount of data. It is necessary to construct the Earth-Moon metaverse in order to obtain and utilize lunar information more effectively. Due to the long communication distance between Earth and Moon as well as the lack of communication resources, a hybrid Earth-Moon metaverse network with channel model and transmission model is designed. To ensure the efficiency and stability of transmission in the network, LSs transmit lunar data to Earth clients (ECs) through the active and passive intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) deployed at relay satellites. Then, we propose a Stackelberg game model to describe the adversarial relationship between the satellites, LSs and ECs, and optimal strategies are obtained by solving the Nash equilibrium to maximize their utility. Simulations demonstrate that the network can effectively shorten the transmission delay and improve the utility of ECs and satellites.