In past years, non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) have emerged as a viable solution for providing ubiquitous connectivity for future wireless networks due to their ability to reach large geographical areas. However, the efficient integration and operation of an NTN with a classic terrestrial network (TN) is challenging due the large amount of parameters to tune. In this paper, we consider the downlink scenario of an integrated TN-NTN transmitting over the S band, comprised of low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites overlapping a large-scale ground cellular network. We propose a new resource management framework to optimize the user equipment (UE) performance by properly controlling the spectrum allocation, the UE association and the transmit power of ground base stations (BSs) and satellites. Our study reveals that, in rural scenarios, NTNs, combined with the proposed radio resource management framework, reduce the number of UEs that are out of coverage, highlighting the important role of NTNs in providing ubiquitous connectivity, and greatly improve the overall capacity of the network. Specifically, our solution leads to more than 200% gain in terms of mean data rate with respect to a network without satellites and a standard integrated TN-NTN when the resource allocation setting follows 3GPP recommendation.

翻译：过去几年中，非地面网络（NTN）由于能够覆盖广阔地理区域，已成为未来无线网络实现泛在连接的有效解决方案。然而，由于需要调节的参数数量庞大，将NTN与经典地面网络（TN）有效集成与运行面临挑战。本文考虑由低地球轨道（LEO）卫星重叠大规模地面蜂窝网络构成的S波段下行链路集成TN-NTN场景。我们提出一种新型资源管理框架，通过合理控制频谱分配、用户设备（UE）关联以及地面基站（BS）与卫星的发射功率来优化用户设备性能。研究表明，在农村场景中，NTN结合所提出的无线电资源管理框架，可减少覆盖盲区内的UE数量，凸显NTN在提供泛在连接中的重要作用，并显著提升网络整体容量。具体而言，与无卫星网络及采用3GPP推荐资源配置的标准集成TN-NTN相比，我们的解决方案在平均数据传输速率方面实现了超过200%的提升。