Software defined intelligent satellite-terrestrial integrated networks: Insights and challenges

Satellite-Terrestrial integrated Networks (STNs) have been advocated by both academia and industry as a promising network paradigm to achieve service continuity and ubiquity. However, STNs suffer from problems including poor flexibility of network architecture, low adaptability to dynamic environments, the lack of network intelligence, and low resource utilization. To handle these challenges, a Software defined Intelligent STN (SISTN) architecture is introduced. Specifically, the hierarchical architecture of the proposal is described and a distributed deployment scheme for SISTNs controllers is proposed to realize agile and effective network management and control. Moreover, three use cases in SISTNs are discussed. Meanwhile, key techniques and their corresponding solutions are presented, followed by the identification of several open issues in SISTNs including compatibility with existing networks, the tradeoff between network flexibility and performance, and so on.