Traffic Splitting of LEO Mega-Constellations with Non-Coherent Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems

In this paper, we develop a traffic splitting strategy for low Earth orbit (LEO) mega-constellations using the noncoherent cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (CFmMIMO) system. The proposed approach effectively distributes data traffic destined for each user terminal (UT) across multiple satellites, optimizing traffic splitting and power control. We introduce a robust optimization framework that utilizes statistical channel state information (sCSI) and traffic statistics to achieve reliable communications. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed traffic splitting optimization achieves a performance gain of up to 5 dB compared to non-optimized methods, and provides reliability improved hundreds of times over its coherent counterpart without traffic splitting.