Stacked Intelligent Metasurfaces-Assisted Satellite-to-Ground Communication: A Path Loss Perspective

Intelligent meta surfaces have been the status quo when it came to beamforming and transmitting signals over complex paths without expanding much power. Recently, Stacked Intelligent Metasurfaces (SIM) have been the latest breakthrough in this domain with the ability to do beamforming in the electromagnetic wave domain. Satellite-to-ground communication has also been under much attention due to the ability to provide connectivity in remote areas. In this paper, we consider an extreme environment where a device placed in remote area and ground network is not reachable connects to the wider internet using Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. The LEO satellite has a SIM mounted on it which is used for the efficient transmission of signal and maximizing the received power and received Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). We calculate the path loss of this system when the distance and the elevation angle between the satellite with SIM and the receiver is changing. We present the path loss for the different elevation angles for different SIM layers and SIM configurations. The SIM-assisted system shows promising results and can be used for aiding the satellite for extreme communication.