Quantum Reinforcement Learning With Classical Policy Deployment for Resource Allocation in Multibeam GEO–LEO Satellite Networks
Quynh Tu Ngo, Ying He, Beeshanga Abewardana Jayawickrama +2 more
Satellite communications (SatCom) are envisioned as a critical enabler of 6G networks, enabling seamless global coverage by integrating terrestrial infrastructures with multi-layered satellite constellations. Among these, the integration between geostationary (GEO) and low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks is particularly attractive, as they combine the broad coverage of GEO satellites with the low latency and high capacity of LEO systems. Within this context, we address the resource allocation problem for LEO satellite through a joint design of beam size and transmit power, while accounting for GEO interference constraints, residual Doppler frequency offsets, and frequency reuse strategies. The objective is to maximize the spectral efficiency of LEO system operating in multi-beam GEO-LEO networks. Motivated by the limitations of classical deep reinforcement learning (RL) in such dynamic orbital settings and the potential of quantum RL for accelerated convergence, we propose a hybrid solution that exploits quantum acceleration during offline training and subsequently exports the learned policy into a classical representational format for onboard LEO satellite deployment. A fully quantum deep deterministic policy gradient framework with variational quantum circuit-based actor and critic is developed, along with a neural network-based policy translator for classical inference. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first deployment-ready quantum RL framework in SatCom, offering efficient offline training, reduced retraining latency, and practical deployment compatibility with existing LEO satellite hardware.
IEEE Internet of Things Journal•Feb 10, 2026•1 citation