The advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) era, where billions of devices and sensors are becoming more and more connected and ubiquitous, is putting a strain on traditional terrestrial networks, that may no longer be able to fulfill service requirements efficiently. This issue is further complicated in rural and remote areas with scarce and low-quality cellular coverage. To fill this gap, the research community is focusing on non-terrestrial networks (NTNs), where Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), High Altitude Platforms (HAPs) and satellites can serve as aerial/space gateways to aggregate, process, and relay the IoT traffic. In this paper we demonstrate this paradigm, and evaluate how common Low-Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies, designed and developed to operate for IoT systems, work in NTNs. We then formalize an optimization problem to decide whether and how IoT traffic can be offloaded to LEO satellites to reduce the burden on terrestrial gateways.

翻译：数十亿个装置和传感器越来越日益连接和无处不在的“物联网”时代的到来给传统的地面网络造成压力,这些网络可能不再能够有效地满足服务要求。在缺少和低质量的蜂窝覆盖的农村和偏远地区,这一问题更加复杂。为了填补这一空白,研究界正在集中关注非地球网络(NTNs),那里无人驾驶航空飞行器(UAVs)、高纬度平台(HAPs)和卫星可以作为航空/空间网关,用于综合、处理和传输IOT交通。在本文中,我们展示了这一范例,并评估了为IOT系统而设计和开发的通用的低频广域网技术(LPWAN)是如何在NTNs工作的。然后,我们正式确定了一个优化问题,以便决定是否以及如何将IOT交通卸载到LEO卫星上,以减轻陆地网关的负担。