Satellite Handover Strategies Based on Minimum Routing Hops for Mega LEO Satellite Networks

Mega low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks serve as effective complements to terrestrial networks. However, the dual mobility of users and LEO satellites makes inter-satellite handovers more frequent for users. Moreover, there are both ascending and descending segments in widely deployed walker-delta constellations. Even if the locations of users do not change, when the access satellites of the communicating parties are not in the same ascending or descending segment, the end-to-end latency between them will increase. To address this challenge, the self-decision handover (SDH) strategy and the joint decision handover (JDH) strategy are proposed, and they both incorporate the routing hops as a crucial handover criterion to minimize the end-to-end latency. In addition, the shortest route hop-count algorithm is designed to assist in the handover decision-making process. Simulations demonstrate that the proposed handover strategies outperform the traditional handover strategies in terms of the number of handovers and end-to-end latency.