Abstract:

The air-space-ground integrated network has been regarded as one of the enable technologies in the future to provide consistent communication experience all over the world.Based on the integration of the air,space and ground network,the area with no communication coverage can be eliminated and interconnection between remote areas can be strengthened.However,the current air-space-ground integrated network has only achieved the preliminary application in some special scenarios,and there are still many challenges to achieve the goal of eliminating the blind area and strengthening the connection.This paper first outlines the structure of the future air-space-ground integrated network.Then,four major challenges encountered in the network integration process are analyzed from the perspectives of hardware,protocols,node deployment and service assurance,including the difficulty of network function evolution raised by dedicated hardware,the low performance of current satellite communication protocol,the deployment of the flying base station in a broad 3D area and the differentiate quality guarantee of various services.Finally,four typical solutions to overcoming the above challenges are summarized to provide reference for the future air-space-ground integrated network,including light-weighted network function virtualization in the satellite,5G based satellite communication system,deployment of the flying base station based on horizontal and vertical decoupling and end-to-end integrated network slicing.

Key words: integrated network, light-weighted virtualization, evolution of space communication protocol, deployment of flying base station, integrated network slicing