This paper reviews the state-of-the art technologies and techniques for integrating satellite and terrestrial networks within a 5G and Beyond Networks (5GBYNs). It highlights key limitations in existing architectures, particularly in addressing interoperability, resilience, and Quality of Service (QoS) for real-time applications. In response, this work proposes a novel Software-Defined Networking (SDN)-based framework for reliable satellite–terrestrial integration. The proposed framework leverages intelligent traffic steering and dynamic access network selection to optimise real-time communications. By addressing gaps in the literature with a distributed SDN control approach spanning terrestrial and space domains, the framework enhances resilience against disruptions, such as natural disasters, while maintaining low latency and jitter. Future research directions are outlined to refine the design and explore its application in 6G systems.

Mitigating the Signaling Resources Expended in 5G Location Management Procedures at Millimeter-Wave Frequencies

As the number of casualties and confirmed cases of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) gradually decreases, several countries across the globe are gradually trying to ease their society to some semblance of normalcy. However, to avoid systems that restrict social interactions in indoor environments, it is necessary to adopt solutions that redefine the ethos of social interactions within indoor environments. To achieve this, technology-based contact tracing (TCT) has been adopted as one of the systems used to mitigate the spread of the outbreak. On this premise, this review discusses co-location technologies suitable for indoor environments, with a specific focus on co-location solutions whose implementation costs are affordable, scalable, and whose access conditions utilize existing infrastructures that are available in off-the-shelf user equipment. This review focuses on wireless fidelity (WiFi) as a co-location technology adopted for TCT. On this premise, the limitations around adoption and recommendations, which highlight improvements, are compactly discussed around WiFi. In this context, a future research direction - on which this review is based - is compactly discussed.

Improving energy efficiency and extending the lifetime of User Equipment (UE) batteries are among the key performance requirements for the Fifth-Generation (5G) network goals. To realize these goals, ongoing studies are developing schemes to improve both performance requirements. One of the mechanisms at the forefront of these studies is Discontinuous Reception (DRX). This mechanism, which was inherited from the Fourth-Generation (4G) wireless network is crucial, as its performance with regard to the performance requirements for 5G goals has a great impact on the user's satisfaction. Although the DRX mechanism is adapted to meet the power-saving need of a 5G wireless network, the energy expenses for operations at millimetre-wave frequencies are still of concern. In this paper, recent research solutions that consider the application of the DRX mechanism in association with key enabling features and factors such as paging, RRC_INACTIVE, mmWave, and UE mobility are discussed for 5G use cases. In addition, the effect of these features and factors is considered, as well as recent solutions to address the challenges identified. Simulation results of this approach showed an average of 399mW of power consumed in a 24-hour period, which represents a 6% mean percentage reduction in UE power consumption when compared to the existing scheme.