Hybrid satellite terrestrial communication systems with buffer-aided relaying

A buffer-aided Satellite communication system is investigated. Specifically, the satellite transmits its signals to the relay earth station situated on the ground; the relay earth station (ES) buffers the signals of the satellite and forwards the buffered signals on the terrestrial link to the destination ES in accordance with channel conditions. Since satellite links can support a high data rate as compared to terrestrial links, therefore, buffering at relay ES is very useful for the considered system. We analyze the performance of the hybrid system in terms of bit error rate (BER). The effect of fading environment on the BER performance of the proposed system is shown in the paper. By using simulation and analytical results, it is shown that the performance of a Satellite communication system can be improved by using a buffer at the relay ES. Another important aspect of this paper is that the satellite and relay ES will transmit only when the channel is good, therefore, it is environment friendly and avoids heavy power transmission due to bad channel quality.