Movable-Antenna-Assisted Dual-Hop FSO/RF Space–Air–Ground Networks With Underlay Spectrum Sharing

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Authors: Zain Ali, Saud Althunibat, Rula Ammuri, Mazen O. Hasna, Khalid A. Qaraqe
Cited by: 1
References: 38

Abstract

This paper investigates a movable-antenna-assisted dual-hop space-air-ground non-terrestrial network (NTN) operating under an underlay spectrum sharing paradigm. A satellite communicates with multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) over free-space optical (FSO) links, while each UAV simultaneously serves a cluster of ground users over radio-frequency (RF) channels subject to interference constraints imposed by a primary receiver. To efficiently exploit the complementary advantages of FSO and RF transmission and the additional spatial degrees of freedom offered by movable antennas, a joint optimization framework is developed to maximize the system sum rate. The proposed framework jointly optimizes satellite and UAV power allocation, multi-antenna precoding at the UAVs, and the positions of multiple movable antennas mounted on each UAV. An alternating-optimization algorithm is employed, where minimum mean square error (MMSE) based precoding accounts for both communication and interference channels, power allocation is convexified using auxiliary rate variables and successive convex approximation, and antenna locations are optimized via Taylor-based convex surrogates. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly outperforms benchmark schemes with fixed antenna locations, heuristic optimization and reinforcement learning methods, while providing robust performance across different system parameters.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Optical Wireless Communication Technologies Satellite Communication Systems Advanced Photonic Communication Systems

Publication details

Journal / source
IEEE Internet of Things Journal
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Volume
13
Issue
12
Pages
27877–27892
Publication date
6 April 2026