Base Station Deployment Strategy Using Lunar Surface Terrain-Aware Field Strength Prediction

With the rapid expansion of lunar exploration programs worldwide, developing terrain-aware communication systems has become a pressing technical challenge. This paper introduces a novel field strength prediction model (FSPM) for lunar communication base station (BS) deployment, adapting ITU-R P. 526 to account for the unique lunar surface terrain characteristics. The radio propagation modeling integrates free space loss, multipath loss, and diffraction loss, with specific considerations for the type and number of obstacles. Leveraging the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data within a radius of 4 km near the lunar south pole and the Apollo 15 landing site, we propose a genetic algorithm to optimize the BS positions for maximum coverage rate using different mobile communication protocols. The experimental evaluation indicates that, at the lunar south pole, LTE protocol can achieve $\mathbf{9 6 . 8 7 \%}$ coverage with 4 BSs, while 5G NR protocol can achieve $\mathbf{9 3 . 6 0 \%}$ coverage with 5 BSs. By contrast, at the Apollo 15 landing site, the coverage rates are $99.22 \%$ with 3 BSs for LTE, and $99.17 \%$ with 4 BSs for 5G NR, respectively. These results can provide significant insights for the future lunar surface communication network construction.