Load Balancing Strategies for Terrestrial and Non-Terrestrial Network Coexistence

Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs) are commonly envisioned as a means of extending coverage beyond the reach of terrestrial infrastructure. However, they can also be used to complement Terrestrial Networks (TNs) in supporting traffic demand. This paper evaluates load balancing strategies for TN-NTN coexistence through bidirectional user offloading and resource allocation. Five offloading strategies are compared. The results show that bidirectional offloading reduces outage by redistributing traffic between both networks.