Research on cell-free hybrid NTN-TN for wide-area IoT

With the emergence of wide-area Internet of things(IoT) applications, a novel cell-free hybrid non-terrestrial-terrestrial network is proposed to meet the need for seamless connectivity across vast geographic regions. The system leverages two distinct deployment modes of non-terrestrial network(NTN) devices to achieve global coverage,where the NTN devices function either as wireless access points or as wireless relays. The differences between these two deployment modes are analyzed, and appropriate deployment scenarios are discussed for each. A case study is conducted to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed system. The results indicate notable improvements in both energy efficiency and communication efficiency. Specifically, the proposed scheme achieves more than a sevenfold increase in both metrics. Finally, the potential opportunities, challenges, and future research directions of the system are discussed.