Improving the Spectral Efficiency of Nonlinear Satellite Systems through Time-Frequency Packing and Advanced Processing

We consider realistic satellite communications systems for broadband and broadcasting applications, based on frequency-division-multiplexed linear modulations, where spectral efficiency is one of the main figures of merit. For these systems, we investigate their ultimate performance limits by using a framework to compute the spectral efficiency when suboptimal receivers are adopted and evaluating the performance improvements that can be obtained through the adoption of the time-frequency packing technique. Our analysis reveals that introducing controlled interference can significantly increase the efficiency of these systems. Moreover, if a receiver which is able to account for the interference and the nonlinear impairments is adopted, rather than a classical predistorter at the transmitter coupled with a simpler receiver, the benefits in terms of spectral efficiency can be even larger. Finally, we consider practical coded schemes and show the potential advantages of the optimized signaling formats when combined with iterative detection/decoding.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure

Iterative pre-distortion of the non-linear satellite channel

Digital Video Broadcasting - Satellite - Second Generation (DVB-S2) is the current European standard for satellite broadcast and broadband communications. It relies on high order modulations up to 32-amplitude/phase-shift-keying (APSK) in order to increase the system spectral efficiency. Unfortunately, as the modulation order increases, the receiver becomes more sensitive to physical layer impairments, and notably to the distortions induced by the power amplifier and the channelizing filters aboard the satellite. Pre-distortion of the non-linear satellite channel has been studied for many years. However, the performance of existing pre-distortion algorithms generally becomes poor when high-order modulations are used on a non-linear channel with a long memory. In this paper, we investigate a new iterative method that pre-distorts blocks of transmitted symbols so as to minimize the Euclidian distance between the transmitted and received symbols. We also propose approximations to relax the pre-distorter complexity while keeping its performance acceptable

Advanced transceivers for spectrally-efficient communications

In this thesis, we will consider techniques to improve the spectral efficiency of digital communication systems, operating on the whole transceiver scheme. First, we will focus on receiver schemes having detection algorithms with a complexity constraint. We will optimize the parameters of the reduced detector with the aim of maximizing the achievable information rate. Namely, we will adopt the channel shortening technique. Then, we will focus on a technique that is getting very popular in the last years (although presented for the first time in 1975): faster-than-Nyquist signaling, and its extension which is time packing. Time packing is a very simple technique that consists in introducing intersymbol interference on purpose with the aim of increasing the spectral efficiency of finite order constellations. Finally, in the last chapters we will combine all the presented techniques, and we will consider their application to satellite channels.Comment: PhD Thesi

On Low Complexity Detection for QAM Isomorphic Constellations

Despite of the known gap from the Shannon's capacity, several standards are still employing QAM or star shape constellations, mainly due to the existing low complexity detectors. In this paper, we investigate the low complexity detection for a family of QAM isomorphic constellations. These constellations are known to perform very close to the peak-power limited capacity, outperforming the DVB-S2X standard constellations. The proposed strategy is to first remap the received signals to the QAM constellation using the existing isomorphism and then break the log likelihood ratio computations to two one dimensional PAM constellations. Gains larger than 0.6 dB with respect to QAM can be obtained over the peak power limited channels without any increase in detection complexity. Our scheme also provides a systematic way to design constellations with low complexity one dimensional detectors. Several open problems are discussed at the end of the paper.Comment: Submitted to IEEE GLOBECOM 201

Advanced techniques for spectrally efficient DVB-S2X systems

We investigate different techniques to improve the spectral efficiency of systems based on the DVB-S2 standard, when the transmitted signal bandwidth cannot be increased because it has already been optimized to the maximum value allowed by transponder filters. We will investigate and compare several techniques to involve different sections of the transceiver scheme. The techniques that will be considered include the use of advanced detection algorithms, the adoption of time packing, and the optimization of the constellation and shaping pulses. The LDPC codes recently proposed for the evolution of the DVB-S2 standard will be considered, as well as the adoption of iterative detection and decoding. Information theoretical analysis will be followed by the study of practical modulation and coding schemes

On the use of multiple satellites to improve the spectral efficiency of broadcast transmissions

We consider the use of multiple co-located satellites to improve the spectral efficiency of broadcast transmissions. In particular, we assume that two satellites transmit on overlapping geographical coverage areas, with overlapping frequencies. We first describe the theoretical framework based on network information theory and, in particular, on the theory for multiple access channels. The application to different scenarios will be then considered, including the bandlimited additive white Gaussian noise channel with average power constraint and different models for the nonlinear satellite channel. The comparison with the adoption of frequency division multiplexing (FDM) is also provided. The main conclusion is that a strategy based on overlapped signals is convenient with respect to FDM, although it requires the adoption of a multiuser detection strategy at the receiver