Coverage Analysis for Downlink Satellite Networks: Effect of Shadowing

Satellite communications have been promising to guarantee global coverage with high capacity. In this paper, we analyze coverage performance of satellite networks with a distance-dependent line-of-sight (LOS) and non-LOS (NLOS) channel propagation probability to incorporate shadowing effect. Extending the stochastic geometry-based network analysis for terrestrial networks, we model the satellite network and users as a Poisson point process and derive an theoretical coverage probability expression to provide analytical understanding of the satellite network. Simulation results verify the exactness of the derived expression. The derived expression includes network parameters for satellite density and altitude, channel fading, pathloss, and the LOS probability, and provides insights on satellite networks. Our key finding is that NLOS channel propagation benefits the coverage performance by reducing the interference from non-associated satellites, and the higher NLOS probability is desirable to improve the coverage performance as the network becomes denser.