Packet Scheduling for Internet of Remote Things (IoRT) devices in Next Generation Satellite Networks

Background: The massive amount of deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) devices via wireless communications has presented a new paradigm in next generation mobile networks. The rapid growth in the deployment of the IoT devices can be linked to the diverse use of several IoT applications for home automations, smart systems, and other forms of innovations in businesses and industry 4.0. Methods: There is need for a robust network infrastructure to actualize the huge traffic demand of the IoT communications in this new paradigm across the globe including rural and remote areas. However, due to technical and economical constraints, the terrestrial network infrastructure is not able to fulfil this requirement. Hence, the need for satellite network infrastructure. This solution will be of inmense benefit to the provision of remote health care, disaster management, remote sensing, and asset tracking and environmental monitoring to name a few. While this remain an interesting solution, the packet scheduling which is one of the key radio resource management functions is still a challenging issue that remains undefined especially in a satellite network scenario that has its own peculiarities and challenges. Results: Hence, the goal of this research work is to design a new packet scheduling scheme that will be suitable for machine type communications and also mixed use case scenario in satellite network scenario. The performance evaluation of the proposed packet scheduler is conducted through simulations. Conclusion: The newly proposed packet scheduling scheme provides at an improvement of approximately 7 Mbps and 0.5 bps/Hz in terms of throughput and spectral efficiency performances respectively in mixed use case scenario, when compared to known throughput optimal packet schedulers, without serious compromise to other performance metrics.