  Satellite Communication systems are a promising solution to extend and
complement terrestrial networks in unserved or under-served areas. This aspect
is reflected by recent commercial and standardisation endeavours. In
particular, 3GPP recently initiated a Study Item for New Radio-based, i.e., 5G,
Non-Terrestrial Networks aimed at deploying satellite systems either as a
stand-alone solution or as an integration to terrestrial networks in mobile
broadband and machine-type communication scenarios. However, typical satellite
channel impairments, as large path losses, delays, and Doppler shifts, pose
severe challenges to the realisation of a satellite-based NR network. In this
paper, based on the architecture options currently being discussed in the
standardisation fora, we discuss and assess the impact of the satellite channel
characteristics on the physical and Medium Access Control layers, both in terms
of transmitted waveforms and procedures for enhanced Mobile BroadBand (eMBB)
and NarrowBand-Internet of Things (NB-IoT) applications. The proposed analysis
shows that the main technical challenges are related to the PHY/MAC procedures,
in particular Random Access (RA), Timing Advance (TA), and Hybrid Automatic
Repeat reQuest (HARQ) and, depending on the considered service and
architecture, different solutions are proposed.
