THE past decades witnessed the application of adaptive coding and modulation (ACM) in satellite links. However, ACM technologies come at the cost of higher complexity when designing the network's carrier plan and user terminals. Accounting for those issues is even more important when the satellite link uses frequencies in Ka band and above, where the attenuation caused by tropospheric phenomena is a major concern. In this paper, we propose a solution for the inbound, i.e., return link, carrier plan sizing of very small aperture terminal (VSAT) networks. As tropospheric attenuation is a key factor, we present a mathematical problem formulation based on spatially correlated attenuation time series. Our proposed sizing scheme is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) optimization problem. The numerical results for a test scenario in Europe show a 10 to 50% bandwidth improvement over traditional sizing methods for outage probabilities lower than 1%.

In this paper, we propose an approach to optimize the frequency plan and associated bandwidth allocation in the return link of a broadband satellite network, by exploring several design techniques for carrier allocation plans. Since bandwidth is a limited resource in satellite telecommunications, the minimization of bandwidth usage is a core issue that satellite communication service providers must solve, in particular for networks using a constant coding and modulation plan, which lacks the flexibility found in newer satellite communication products and can be subject to hardware constraints. This problematic led us to raise the following question: how can the long term bandwidth requirement of the network be minimized, given a set of ground terminals, of Modulations and Codings, and of discrete bandwidths. In this document we formally define the long-term carrier allocation problem and analyze current practical solutions. We subsequently investigate two other potential solutions, found to be more bandwidth-efficient: one based on heuristics and another based on integer linear programming. Finally, we look at the impact of several parameters on the performance of those three methods. Overall we observed marginal reductions in bandwidth, however significant gains were reached for networks with small return links with low committed information rate, a case in which some constant coding and modulation networks could fall. We concluded that those networks could benefit from our methods and see a significant reduction in bandwidth, and subsequently operational costs, at low implementation costs.