Hybrid Satellite-Terrestrial Communication Networks for the Maritime Internet of Things: Key Technologies, Opportunities, and Challenges

With the rapid development of marine activities, there has been an increasing number of maritime mobile terminals, as well as a growing demand for high-speed and ultra-reliable maritime communications to keep them connected. Traditionally, the maritime Internet of Things (IoT) is enabled by maritime satellites. However, satellites are seriously restricted by their high latency and relatively low data rate. As an alternative, shore & island-based base stations (BSs) can be built to extend the coverage of terrestrial networks using fourth-generation (4G), fifth-generation (5G), and beyond 5G services. Unmanned aerial vehicles can also be exploited to serve as aerial maritime BSs. Despite of all these approaches, there are still open issues for an efficient maritime communication network (MCN). For example, due to the complicated electromagnetic propagation environment, the limited geometrically available BS sites, and rigorous service demands from mission-critical applications, conventional communication and networking theories and methods should be tailored for maritime scenarios. Towards this end, we provide a survey on the demand for maritime communications, the state-of-the-art MCNs, and key technologies for enhancing transmission efficiency, extending network coverage, and provisioning maritime-specific services. Future challenges in developing an environment-aware, service-driven, and integrated satellite-air-ground MCN to be smart enough to utilize external auxiliary information, e.g., sea state and atmosphere conditions, are also discussed

Illusion Media: Generating Virtual Objects Using Realizable Metamaterials

We propose a class of optical transformation media, illusion media, which render the enclosed object invisible and generate one or more virtual objects as desired. We apply the proposed media to design a microwave device, which transforms an actual object into two virtual objects. Such an illusion device exhibits unusual electromagnetic behavior as verified by full-wave simulations. Different from the published illusion devices which are composed of left-handed materials with simultaneously negative permittivity and permeability, the proposed illusion media have finite and positive permittivity and permeability. Hence the designed device could be realizable using artificial metamaterials.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, published in Appl. Phys. Lett

Maritime coverage enhancement using UAVs coordinated with hybrid satellite-terrestrial networks

Due to the agile maneuverability, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have shown great promise for on-demand communications. In practice, UAV-aided aerial base stations are not separate. Instead, they rely on existing satellites/terrestrial systems for spectrum sharing and efficient backhaul. In this case, how to coordinate satellites, UAVs and terrestrial systems is still an open issue. In this paper, we deploy UAVs for coverage enhancement of a hybrid satellite-terrestrial maritime communication network. Using a typical composite channel model including both large-scale and small-scale fading, the UAV trajectory and in-flight transmit power are jointly optimized, subject to constraints on UAV kinematics, tolerable interference, backhaul, and the total energy of the UAV for communications. Different from existing studies, only the location-dependent large-scale channel state information (CSI) is assumed available, because it is difficult to obtain the small-scale CSI before takeoff in practice and the ship positions can be obtained via the dedicated maritime Automatic Identification System. The optimization problem is non-convex. We solve it by using problem decomposition, successive convex optimization and bisection searching tools. Simulation results demonstrate that the UAV fits well with existing satellite and terrestrial systems, using the proposed optimization framework

Optimal Beamforming for Hybrid Satellite Terrestrial Networks with Nonlinear PA and Imperfect CSIT

In hybrid satellite-terrestrial networks (HSTNs), spectrum sharing is crucial to alleviate the "spectrum scarcity" problem. Therein, the transmit beams should be carefully designed to mitigate the inter-satellite-terrestrial interference. Different from previous studies, this work considers the impact of both nonlinear power amplifier (PA) and large-scale channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) on beamforming. These phenomena are usually inevitable in a practical HSTN. Based on the Saleh model of PA nonlinearity and the large-scale multi-beam satellite channel parameters, we formulate a beamforming optimization problem to maximize the achievable rate of the satellite system while ensuring that the inter-satellite-terrestrial interference is below a given threshold. The optimal amplitude and phase of desired beams are derived in a decoupled manner. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed beamforming scheme.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, journa

Unifying ultrafast demagnetization and intrinsic Gilbert damping in Co/Ni bilayers with electronic relaxation near the Fermi surface

The ability to controllably manipulate the laser-induced ultrafast magnetic dynamics is a prerequisite for future high speed spintronic devices. The optimization of devices requires the controllability of the ultrafast demagnetization time, , and intrinsic Gilbert damping, . In previous attempts to establish the relationship between and , the rare-earth doping of a permalloy film with two different demagnetization mechanism is not a suitable candidate. Here, we choose Co/Ni bilayers to investigate the relations between and by means of time-resolved magneto-optical Kerr effect (TRMOKE) via adjusting the thickness of the Ni layers, and obtain an approximately proportional relation between these two parameters. The remarkable agreement between TRMOKE experiment and the prediction of breathing Fermi-surface model confirms that a large Elliott-Yafet spin-mixing parameter is relevant to the strong spin-orbital coupling at the Co/Ni interface. More importantly, a proportional relation between and in such metallic films or heterostructures with electronic relaxation near Fermi surface suggests the local spin-flip scattering domains the mechanism of ultrafast demagnetization, otherwise the spin-current mechanism domains. It is an effective method to distinguish the dominant contributions to ultrafast magnetic quenching in metallic heterostructures by investigating both the ultrafast demagnetization time and Gilbert damping simultaneously. Our work can open a novel avenue to manipulate the magnitude and efficiency of Terahertz emission in metallic heterostructures such as the perpendicular magnetic anisotropic Ta/Pt/Co/Ni/Pt/Ta multilayers, and then it has an immediate implication of the design of high frequency spintronic devices

A class of line-transformed cloaks with easily-realizable constitutive parameters

We propose a class of line-transformed cylindrical cloaks which have easily-realizable constitutive parameters. The scattering properties of such cloaks have been investigated numerically for both transverse-electric (TE) and transverse-magnetic (TM) incidences of plane waves. A line-transformed invisibility cloak with a perfectly electric conducting (PEC) inner boundary is actually a reshaping of a PEC line to which the cloaked object is crushed. The numerical results of near-field distributions and far-field scattering properties have verified the above conclusions. We also investigate the relationship between the constitutive parameters of a line-transformed cloak and the length of the corresponding line. The changing range of constitutive parameters is large when the line is short, while the changing range becomes small when the line is long. The above conclusion provides an efficient way to realize the invisibility cloaks using artificial metamaterials.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure