Delivering Multimedia Services in LEO satellite NTNs Supported by Backward and Frontward ISL during Feeder Link Switch-Over

Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations are of paramount importance for achieving global connectivity and providing services with low latency in NTN systems. However, despite the numerous benefits derived from LEO satellite applications, several issues are still open. Among them, the rapid mobility of LEO satellites around the Earth leads to frequent disconnections of the feeder link between the LEO satellite and the NTN Gateway (NTN-GW) on the ground, thus triggering the feeder link switch-over (FLSO) procedure. This paper proposes to exploit backward and frontward Inter-Satellite Links (ISLs) between LEO satellites to reduce the time of FLSO in case the NTN-GWs are positioned far from each other. Finally, the performance of the two proposed FLSO procedures against the legacy 3GPP FLSO is analyzed when delivering eMBB services over 6G NTNs.