Abstract and bio
This talk presents a research and innovation programme on non-terrestrial networks (NTN)
built on three complementary components. The first is a set of advanced analytical tools
for the design of efficient, high-performance NTN: recent theoretical results that
characterize and predict the statistics of spectral efficiency in large-scale deployments,
and that support the design of constellation architectures, routing strategies and
critical performance metrics such as latency and collision probability as a function of
satellite density. Ongoing work extends these methods to terrestrial/non-terrestrial
integration, to sensing and AI capabilities, to reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, and to
the environmental impact and sustainability of NTN deployments, as well as to the economic
analysis of these large-scale systems. The second component is interdisciplinary and
regulatory: following the 2024 report of the Académie des sciences on large satellite
constellations, NTN were selected as one of the three scientific priorities of the S7
process for the 2026 G7 summit, and the resulting joint statement of the G7 academies calls
for an international, science-based regulatory framework ensuring the sustainable use of
low Earth orbit. The third component is industrial and international cooperation, with
partners such as Univity, Greenerwave and ONERA, and with universities in South Korea.
François Baccelli is a research director at Inria Paris and a visiting professor at
Télécom Paris, where he co-founded the LINCS joint laboratory. He leads the ERC
Advanced project NEMO on network mathematics. His work covers point processes, stochastic
geometry and the dynamics of large networks, and he is the co-author of reference books on
stochastic geometry and wireless networks. A member of the French Academy of Sciences since
2005, he received the Grand Prix France Télécom in 2002, the ACM SIGMETRICS
Achievement Award and the IEEE Rice and Abraham prizes in 2014, and the Blackwell Prize in
2024.
