Prediction of satellite shadowing in smart cities with application to IoT

Abstract

The combination of satellite direct reception and terrestrial 5G infrastructure is essential to guarantee coverage in satellite based-Internet of Things, mainly in smart cities where buildings can cause high power losses. In this paper, we propose an accurate and fast graphical method for predicting the satellite coverage in urban areas and SatCom on-the-move scenarios. The aim is to provide information that could be useful in the IoT network planning process, e.g., in the decision of how many terrestrial repeaters are really needed and where they should be placed. Experiments show that the shadowed areas predicted by the method correspond almost perfectly with experimental data measured from an Eutelsat satellite in the urban area of Barcelona.