A Handover Strategy Based on Augmentation Path in Satellite-Terrestrial Integrated Networks

By using the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite network as an extension of terrestrial networks to build a satellite-terrestrial integrated network(STIN), it is conducive to achieving the goals of global seamless coverage and enhancing communication quality. The high-speed movement of LEO satellites causes frequent satellite handover requirements for ground user terminals. Additionally, as the number of users increases, the complexity of managing these handover processes escalates significantly. Thus, this work proposes a handover strategy based on augmentation path tailored for a massive number of users. Specifically, this work constructs a reasonable handover model by combining subjective and objective methods to weight the influencing factors during the handover process and by employing efficient user grouping. On this handover model, the optimal handover matching relationship is obtained through augmentation. Simulation results reveal that the proposed strategy achieves average improvements of 6.8 % in handover success rate and 54.7 % in load balance, respectively, and decreases signaling overhead by 60 % compared to four common methods.