Joint Communication and Sensing Design for Integrated Satellite-Terrestrial Maritime Systems

2026-07-13

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenge of jointly achieving reliable maritime communication and environmental sensing by proposing an integrated satellite-terrestrial communication and sensing system. Leveraging coordinated operation between low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites and ground base stations, the system utilizes shared radio-frequency signals to simultaneously deliver communication services and perform target sensing. The key innovation lies in the first-time application of differential evolution algorithms to satellite-terrestrial cooperative sensing, coupled with a unified optimization framework that jointly enhances communication and sensing performance through coordinated beamforming. This framework maximizes the aggregate user data rate while satisfying constraints on localization accuracy and transmit power. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly outperforms existing baseline schemes in both positioning accuracy and achievable throughput.

Abstract

Joint communication and sensing has been a key technology in 6G. By integrating sensing into maritime communications, ships can communicate with the base station while sensing the surrounding environment to ensure safe navigation. In this paper, we introduce an integrated satellite-terrestrial maritime system (ISTMS) with joint communication and sensing based on the same radio-frequency signals. Specifically, the terrestrial base station (TBS) and low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite provide communication services for near-shore users (NSUs) and off-shore users (OSUs), respectively, while simultaneously performing target sensing. Based on a differential evolution method (DE), we propose a sensing algorithm, which can enhance the location accuracy and reduce resource consumption. Furthermore, we derive the key performance metrics for both communication and sensing. Through joint beamforming optimization of the TBS and LEO satellite, we maximize the sum rate of maritime users while satisfying target localization accuracy requirements and transmit power constraints. Finally, extensive simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms in terms of location accuracy and transmission rate compared with the baseline algorithms.

Problem

• Joint Communication and Sensing
• Integrated Satellite-Terrestrial Maritime System
• Target Localization Accuracy
• Maritime Communication
• 6G

Innovation

• Integrated Sensing and Communication
• Satellite-Terrestrial Integration
• Differential Evolution
• Joint Beamforming
• Maritime 6G