Demand-Based Adaptive Multi-Beam Pattern and Footprint Planning for High Throughput GEO Satellite Systems

Abstract

The current broadband coverage area requisites and the expected user demand is satisfied by the state of the art satellite industry by using multiple spot beams of high throughput satellites with fixed multi-beam pattern and footprint planning. However, in recent years, new mobile broadband users with dynamic traffic demand are requesting for services in remote geographical locations such as air (aeroplanes) and water (ships). Furthermore, the expected demand varies with time and geographical location of the users. Hence, a practical approach to meet such heterogeneous demand is to plan adaptive beams to the satellites equipped with beamforming capabilities. In this paper, we study the state of the art fixed multi-beam pattern and footprint plan and show its drawbacks to support the non-uniformly distributed user terminals and varying traffic demands. To end this, we propose an adaptive multi-beam pattern and footprint plan where we design spot beams with flexible size and position based on the spatial clustering of the users in order to increase the flexibility of the high throughput satellite system. Numerical simulations demonstrate the high system performance of the proposed methodology.

Matching Traffic Demand in GEO Multibeam Satellites: The Joint Use of Dynamic Beamforming and Precoding Under Practical Constraints

“…Recent works in SatCom utilize heuristics (e.g., [12], [23], [25]) or learning based (e.g., [7], [26]) techniques to optimize certain flexibilities of the multibeam traffic-matching problem. In particular, authors in [26] propose an adaptive beam layout plan (ABLP) solution using a clustering method on the coverage area.…”

“…Recent works in SatCom utilize heuristics (e.g., [12], [23], [25]) or learning based (e.g., [7], [26]) techniques to optimize certain flexibilities of the multibeam traffic-matching problem. In particular, authors in [26] propose an adaptive beam layout plan (ABLP) solution using a clustering method on the coverage area. The approach uses traffic demand and location information of the users to obtain a satisfactory uniform distribution of the demand across beams with elliptic shapes.…”

“…Moreover, different ABLPs with different constraints can be envisaged in a dynamic beamforming (DBF) framework. For example, the ABLP method from [26] uses an elliptic Gaussian beam footprint model featuring no sidelobes. Using this supposition, the radio-frequency (RF) coverage area inside a given beam is smoothly filled with no nulls.…”

“…2) Feasible Coverage Adaptability: We study the physical feasibility and necessary resource planning for the target DBF design in [26]. We also extend its adaptability under a limited power-budget.…”

Antenna Array Enabled Space/Air/Ground Communications and Networking for 6G

“…Therefore, traffic-based dynamic coverage schemes are needed to adjust the size of a spot beam and resource allocation [134]. To support the non-uniform distribution of users and varying traffic requirements, adaptive multi-beam pattern and footprint planning were developed [135], where spot beams with flexible sizes and positions were designed according to user spatial clustering to improve the flexibility of satellite communication systems. In [136], a coverage metric was proposed to measure the average coverage level of satellite constellations of different orbital altitudes for backhaul.…”