**6. Conclusion**

This paper has proposed a distributed handover algorithm (DHA) for a network comprising terrestrial, aerial and space-based segments. DHA enables aerial platform to satellite handover and suborbital intersatellite handover in a space vehicle. The network uses ground stations deployed for radio astronomy. Simulation shows that DHA enhances channel capacity and reduces latency by 18.4 and 11.6% on average, respectively. The paper also proposed the joint use of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles for improving accessibility to cloud content while minimizing aviation safety concerns. The aerial vehicles are deployed when cloud access via terrestrial wireless networks is subject to significant latency due to network congestion. Simulations show that using aerial diversity reduces the effect of network congestion on terrestrial wireless networks. The aggregate throughput achieved on the terrestrial wireless network increases by up to 85% on average.
