A Beam Search-Based Channel Allocation Method for Interference Mitigation of NGSO Satellites with Multi-Beam Antennas

Abstract

In the past few years, non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) satellite communication constellations have regained popularity due to their conspicuous advantages. Nevertheless, with more NGSO satellites getting involved in communications, the spectrum resources should become much more scarce. Multi-beam high throughput satellite and spectrum sharing are two major techniques in communication design. The two techniques can significantly mitigate interference and highly augment the capacity of the communication system. Thus, they are commonly used in satellite communication systems nowadays. With a massive number of NGSO satellites comprising the communication system and moving in their orbits, interference scenarios are pretty complex. In this article, the relationship between the level of interference and the beam distance is deduced. Moreover, for beams with different tilting angles, the different off-axis angles may correspond to the same beam distance, which is directly related to the interference level. Through the interference analysis, we propose a channel allocation method that uses a beam search algorithm to optimize the channel allocation problem and achieves outstanding time efficiency. The performance of the proposed method is validated by a coexisting scenario of the geostationary orbit and NGSO satellite communication systems. The results show that the level of interference can be largely mitigated, and the capacity of communication systems is significantly augmented.

Keywords

• NGSO satellite constellations
• interference mitigation
• channel allocation
• multi-beam antennas
• beam search algorithm