As 5th generation (5G) networks continue to evolve, there is a growing interest toward the integration of Terrestrial Networks (TNs) and Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs). Specifically, NTNs leverage space/air base stations such as satellites, High Altitude Platforms (HAPs), and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for expanding wireless coverage to underserved rural/remote areas, supporting emergency communications, and offloading traffic in highly congested urban environments. In this paper we focus on the 3GPP 5G NR-NTN standard in the context of satellite communication networks, and highlight critical challenges that must be addressed for proper full-stack protocol design, with considerations related to the PHY, MAC, and higher layers. We also present simulation results in ns-3 to demonstrate the impact of some of these challenges on the network, as an initial step toward more advanced standardization activities on 3GPP 5G NR-NTN.
@article{arxiv.2601.14883,
title = {5G NR Non-Terrestrial Networks: Open Challenges for Full-Stack Protocol Design},
author = {Francesco Rossato and Mattia Figaro and Alessandro Traspadini and Takayuki Shimizu and Chinmay Mahabal and Sanjeewa Herath and Chunghan Lee and Dogan Kutay Pekcan and Michele Zorzi and Marco Giordani},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.14883},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
8 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, This article has been submitted to IEEE for publication. Copyright may change without notice