The future of global connectivity relies on the seamless integration of satellite and terrestrial networks. With advancements enabling terrestrial devices to directly connect to satellites and the potential of high-speed 5G millimeter-wave links for backhauling ground station data, connecting these networks is more critical than ever. Satellites and ground stations can now act as relays between terrestrial base stations and devices, removing coverage barriers and providing global connectivity. However, the significant spectrum overlap between 27.5 to 30.0 GHz leads to co-channel interference for 5G links, severely degrading efficiency or causing complete link failure. Current approaches, such as distance, frequency, and direction separation, often result in spectrum inefficiency and coverage gaps.
This paper presents mmSubArray: Array of Sub-band Phased Arrays, a novel solution utilizing commercial off-the-shelf phased arrays to achieve full-spectrum utilization and enable joint satellite and terrestrial networks. Through extensive simulations and real-world measurements, we demonstrate the interference challenges and evaluate the efficacy of our approach. Additionally, we have open-sourced our Python simulator and hardware implementation source codes, providing valuable tools for industrial deployment and future research.
