Integrating space and terrestrial networks with passenger airplanes for 6th generation wireless - will it work?

With the increasing demand for wireless connectivity, communication technology is moving towards the integration of terrestrial networks with space networks. The creation of this Integrated Space and Terrestrial Network (ISTN) is of critical importance for industries such as logistics, mining, agriculture,fishery and defense. However, a number of grand technological challenges have to be overcome for ISTN through low-cost airborne platforms and high data-rate backbone links. This article discusses a pair of bottlenecks that severely limit the ISTN capacity and reviews the family of wireless communication technologies suitable for supporting such backbone links. Anovel ISTN architecture that makes use of the civil airliner networks to form a low-cost airborne network is proposed. Combined with the emerging high-speed long-range millimeter wave (mm-wave) communication systems as the backbone and access links, the proposed architecture is capable of supportinga high-capacity ISTN at a low cost. Some key technologies, which enable the realization of such a high-capacity low-cost ISTN, are also suggested