Co-Channel Interference Cancellation at the User Terminal in Multibeam Satellite Systems

Abstract

We study the applicability of soft interference cancellation in the forward link of multibeam satellite systems with focus on mobile terminals. We adopt a standard currently used in commercial satellite systems as a reference. The multibeam satellite antenna radiation diagram has been generated using a physical optics reflector model while a widely adopted channel model has been used for the land mobile satellite (LMS) channel. The interference pattern has been calculated using a system simulator developed by the European Space Agency (ESA). Starting from the analysis of the interference pattern we study the application of a low complexity soft interference cancellation scheme in a commercial satellite system. Our results show that, under realistic conditions, a two-colors frequency reuse scheme can be employed while guaranteeing service availability across the coverage and keeping the complexity at the user terminals relatively low.