Contribution of non‐orthogonal multiple access signalling to practical multibeam satellite deployments

This work explores the contribution of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) signalling to improve some relevant metrics of a multibeam satellite downlink. Users are paired to exploit signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) imbalances coming from the coexistence of different types of terminals, and they can be flexibly allocated to the beams, thus relaxing the cell boundaries of the satellite footprint. Different practical considerations are accommodated, such as a spatially non-uniform traffic demand, non-linear amplification effects and the use of the DVB-S2X air interface. Results show how higher traffic volumes can be channelized by the satellite, thanks to the additional bit rates which are generated for the strong users under the superposition of signals, with carefully designed power levels for DVB-S2X modulation and coding schemes in the presence of non-linear impairments.Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. PID2019-105717RB-C21Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. PDC2021-120959-C22Xunta de GaliciaUniversidade de Vigo/CISU

Partial-duplex amplify-and-forward relaying: spectral efficiency analysis under self-interference

We propose a novel mode of operation for Amplify-and-Forward relays in which the spectra of the relay input and output signals partially overlap. This partial-duplex relaying mode encompasses half-duplex and full-duplex as particular cases. By viewing the partial-duplex relay as a bandwidth-preserving Linear Periodic Time-Varying system, an analysis of the spectral efficiency in the presence of self-interference is developed. In contrast with previous works, self-interference is regarded as a useful information-bearing component rather than simply assimilated to noise. This approach reveals that previous results regarding the impact of self-interference on (full-duplex) relay performance are overly pessimistic. Based on a frequency-domain interpretation of the effect of self-interference, a number of suboptimal decoding architectures at the destination node are also discussed. It is found that the partial-duplex relaying mode may provide an attractive tradeoff between spectral efficiency and receiver complexity.Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. TEC2016-75103-C2-2-RAgencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. TEC2016-76409-C2-2

Distributed precoding systems in multi-gateway multibeam satellites: regularization and coarse beamforming

This paper deals with the problem of beamforming design in a multibeam satellite, which is shared by different groups of terminals -clusters-, each served by an Earth station or gateway. Each gateway precodes the symbols addressed to its respective users; the design follows an MMSE criterion, and a regularization factor judiciously chosen allows to account for the presence of mutually interfering clusters, extending more classical results applicable to one centralized station. More importantly, channel statistics can be used instead of instantaneous channel state information, avoiding the exchange of information among gateways through backhaul links. The on-board satellite beamforming weights are designed to exploit the degrees of freedom of the satellite antennas to minimize the noise impact and the interference to some specific users. On-ground beamforming results are provided as a reference to compare the joint performance of MMSE precoders and on-board beamforming network.Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. TEC2016-76409-C2-2-RAgencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. TEC2016-75103-C2-2-RXunta de Galici

Neural network aided computation of mutual information for adaptation of spatial modulation

© 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Index Modulations, in the form of Spatial Modulation or Polarized Modulation, are gaining traction for both satellite and terrestrial next generation communication systems. Adaptive Spatial Modulation based links are needed to fully exploit the transmission capacity of time-variant channels. The adaptation of code and/or modulation requires a real-time evaluation of the channel achievable rates. Some existing results in the literature present a computational complexity which scales quadratically with the number of transmit antennas and the constellation order. Moreover, the accuracy of these approximations is low and it can lead to wrong Modulation and Coding Scheme selection. In this work we apply a Multilayer Feedforward Neural Network to compute the achievable rate of a generic Index Modulation link. The case of two antennas/polarizations is analyzed in depth, showing not only a one-hundred fold decrement of the Mean Square Error in the estimation of the capacity as compared with existing analytical approximations, but also a fifty times reduction of the computational complexity. Moreover, the extension to an arbitrary number of antennas is explained and supported with simulations. More generally, neural networks can be considered as promising candidates for the practical estimation of complex metrics in communication related settings.This work was funded by the Xunta de Galicia (Secretaria Xeral de Universidades) under a predoctoral scholarship (cofunded by the European Social Fund) and it was partially funded by the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (Spain) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under project MYRADA (TEC2016-75103-C2-2-R). It was also funded by the Xunta de Galicia and the ERDF (Agrupación Estratéxica Consolidada de Galicia accreditation 2016-2019). Furthermore, this work has received funding from the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación under project TERESA, TEC2017-90093-C3-1-R (AEI/FEDER,UE); and from the Catalan Government (2017 SGR 891 and 2017 SGR 1479).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Two-level frame precoding with non-cooperative gateways

This paper considers the pre-processing design to mitigate the multibeam interference in the downlink of a high-throughput satellite, with a common precoder for several users sharing the same frame, and limited adaptation capabilities on-board the satellite. Beams are grouped in clusters managed by different non-cooperative gateways. A two-level approach is performed, with an on-board beamforming network complemented by on-ground precoders. The former, designed with the SLNR (signal-to-leakage and noise ratio) criterion, mitigates the inter-cluster interference, whereas the latter fight the intra-cluster multiuser co-channel interference. Judicious user scheduling is also addressed to limit the impact of the multicasting and limited adaptation capabilities. Several two-level precoding designs can be obtained by setting accordingly the degree of cooperation and the frame adaptation, with an overall satisfactory performance with respect to the single-gateway benchmark. In particular, a sector-based solution with non-cooperative gateways presents a good trade-off between gateway autonomy and performance.Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad | Ref. TEC2016-75103-C2-2-RMinisterio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad | Ref. TEC2016-76409-C2-2-

Channel dependent mutual information in index modulations

Mutual Information is the metric that is used to perform link adaptation, which allows to achieve rates near capacity. The computation of adaptive transmission modes is achieved by employing the mapping between the Signal to Noise Ratio and the Mutual Information. Due to the high complexity of the computation of the Mutual Information, this process is performed off-line via Monte Carlo simulations, whose results are stored in look-up tables. However, in Index Modulations, such as Spatial Modulation or Polarized Modulation, this is not feasible since the constellation and the Mutual Information are channel dependent and it would require to compute this metric at each time instant if the channel is time varying. In this paper, we propose different approximations in order to obtain a simple closed-form expression that allows to compute the Mutual Information at each time instant and thus, making feasible the link adaptation.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Practical implementation of link adaptation with dual polarized modulation

The use of dual polarization in mobile satellite systems is very promising for increasing the channel capacity. Polarized Modulation is proposed in this paper for use in practical systems, by providing simple equations for computing its capacity and featuring a link adaptation algorithm. This scheme shows remarkable gains in the spectral efficiency when compared with single polarization and other multi-antenna techniques such as V-BLAST. Polarized Modulation is a particular instance of more general Index Modulations, which are being considered for 5G networks. Thus, the proposed link adaptation algorithm could find synergies with current activities for future terrestrial networks.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Channel dependent mutual information in index modulations

Mutual Information is the metric that is used to perform link adaptation, which allows to achieve rates near capacity. The computation of adaptive transmission modes is achieved by employing the mapping between the Signal to Noise Ratio and the Mutual Information. Due to the high complexity of the computation of the Mutual Information, this process is performed off-line via Monte Carlo simulations, whose results are stored in look-up tables. However, in Index Modulations, such as Spatial Modulation or Polarized Modulation, this is not feasible since the constellation and the Mutual Information are channel dependent and it would require to compute this metric at each time instant if the channel is time varying. In this paper, we propose different approximations in order to obtain a simple closed-form expression that allows to compute the Mutual Information at each time instant and thus, making feasible the link adaptation.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Practical implementation of link adaptation with dual polarized modulation

The use of dual polarization in mobile satellite systems is very promising for increasing the channel capacity. Polarized Modulation is proposed in this paper for use in practical systems, by providing simple equations for computing its capacity and featuring a link adaptation algorithm. This scheme shows remarkable gains in the spectral efficiency when compared with single polarization and other multi-antenna techniques such as V-BLAST. Polarized Modulation is a particular instance of more general Index Modulations, which are being considered for 5G networks. Thus, the proposed link adaptation algorithm could find synergies with current activities for future terrestrial networks.Peer Reviewe

Practical implementation of link adaptation with dual polarized modulation

The use of dual polarization in mobile satellite systems is very promising for increasing the channel capacity. Polarized Modulation is proposed in this paper for use in practical systems, by providing simple equations for computing its capacity and featuring a link adaptation algorithm. This scheme shows remarkable gains in the spectral efficiency when compared with single polarization and other multi-antenna techniques such as V-BLAST. Polarized Modulation is a particular instance of more general Index Modulations, which are being considered for 5G networks. Thus, the proposed link adaptation algorithm could find synergies with current activities for future terrestrial networks.Peer Reviewe