Bhavani Shankar Mysore Rama Rao

Gateway Switching in Q/V Band Satellite Feeder Links

A main challenge towards realizing the next generation Terabit/s broadband satellite communications (SatCom) is the limited spectrum available in the Ka band. An attractive solution is to move the feeder link to the higher Q/V band, where more spectrum is available. When utilizing the Q/V band, due to heavy rain attenuation, gateway diversity is considered a necessity to ensure the required feeder link availability. Although receive site diversity has been studied in the past for SatCom, there is much less maturity in terms of transmit diversity techniques. In this paper, a modified switch and stay combining scheme is proposed for a Q/V band feeder link, but its performance is also evaluated over an end-to-end satellite link. The proposed scheme is pragmatic and has close to optimal performance with notably lower complexity.

Detection of sparse random signals using compressive measurements

We consider the problem of detecting a sparse random signal from the compressive measurements without reconstructing the signal. Using a subspace model for the sparse signal where the signal parameters are drawn according to Gaussian law, we obtain the detector based on Neyman-Pearson criterion and analytically determine its operating characteristics when the signal covariance is known. These results are extended to situations where the covariance cannot be estimated. The results can be used to determine the number of measurements needed for a particular detector performance and also illustrate the presence of an optimal support for a given number of measurements.

Low complexity predistortion and equalization in nonlinear multicarrier satellite communications

Aiming to reduce the power/mass requirements in satellite transponders and to reduce mission costs, joint amplification of multiple carriers using a single high-power amplifier (HPA) is being considered. In this scenario, a careful investigation of the resulting power efficiency is essential as amplification is nonlinear, and multicarrier signals exhibit enlarged peak-to-average power ratio. Thus, operating the amplifier close to saturation vastly increases signal distortion resulting in a severe degradation of performance, especially for higher order modulations. This paper proposes a reduced-complexity digital predistortion (DPD) scheme at the transmitter and a corresponding equalizer (EQ) at the receiver to mitigate these nonlinear effects. Scenarios include both the forward as well as the return links. In particular, the paper exploits the MIMO Volterra representation and builds on a basis pursuit approach using a LASSO (least absolute shrinkage and selection operator) algorithm to achieve an efficient basis representation, avoiding large computational complexity, to describe the selection of predistorter/equalizer model. The work further compares and contrasts the two mitigation techniques taking various system aspects into consideration. The gains in performance and amplification efficiency demonstrated by the use of DPD/ EQ motivate their inclusion in next-generation satellite systems.

Large scale transmit diversity in Q/V band feeder link with multiple gateways

Exploiting transmit diversity amid a high number of multiple gateways (GW) is a new research challenge in Q/V band satellite communication providing data rates of hundreds of Gbit/s. In this paper, we propose a practical switching strategy in a scenario with N+P GWs (N active and P redundant GWs) towards achieving GW transmit diversity. Differently from other works, the treatment in this paper is analytical and explores two key factors: outage performance and switching rate in detail. Further, the interplay between the number of redundant and active GWs on the availability is illustrated highlighting the contribution of the work towards system sizing.

Data predistortion for multicarrier satellite channels using orthogonal memory polynomials

Sharing the on-board high power amplifier among different uplinked carriers (links) is attractive since it provides for economical and sustainable satellite missions. However, the non-linear characteristic of the satellite amplifier introduces intermodulation products leading to Adjacent Channel Interference (ACI), thereby degrading performance, more so for the spectrally efficient modulations. Towards supporting higher order modulations, this work proposes a novel distortion mitigation technique at the transmitter (predistortion) based on orthogonal memory polynomials and highlights its salient features: performance improvement, scalability and low complexity.

Non-parametric data predistortion for non-linear channels with memory

With the growing application of high order modulation techniques, the mitigation of the non-linear distortions introduced by the power amplification, has become a major issue in telecommunication. More sophisticated techniques to counteract the strong generated interferences need to be investigated in order to achieve the desired power and spectral efficiency. This work proposes a novel approach for the definition of a transmitter technique (predistortion) that outperforms the standard methods with respect to both performance and efficiency.

On the diversity and complexity of Zero Forcing receivers for MIMO Zero Padded systems

Zero padded systems with linear receivers are shown to be robust and amenable to fast implementations in single antenna scenarios. In this paper, properties of such systems are investigated when multiple antennas are present at both ends of the communication link. In particular, their diversity and complexity are evaluated for precoded transmissions. The linear receivers are shown to exploit multipath and receive diversities, even in the absence of any coding at the transmitter. Use of additional redundancy to improve performance is considered and the effect of transmission rate on diversity order is analyzed. Low complexity implementations of Zero Forcing receivers are devised to further enhance their applicability.

Effect of imperfect channel estimate on the performance of MMSE receivers in multibeam satellite systems: First order analysis

Aggressive frequency reuse in a multibeam satellite system offers wider bandwidths per beam at the cost of increased co-channel interference. Focussing on the return link of interactive mobile satellite systems, emphasis has been laid on Minimum Mean Squared Error (MMSE) receivers at the gateway to reduce the co-channel interference arising out of aggressive reuse. Performance of such receivers have been evaluated in presence of perfect channel information and synchronization showing impressive gains in throughput. Towards bringing such receivers closer to system implementation, this work aims at understanding the effect of imperfect channel estimates on the resulting performance. In particular, utilizing first order approximations, closed-form expressions for the MMSE receiver and the resulting Mean Squared Error (MSE) have been derived. These expressions provide insight into the effect of channel, noise levels and the estimation error on performance while indicating the robustness of MMSE receiver.

MIMO Extension to DVB-SH

DVB-SH is a hybrid satellite-terrestrial system combining a satellite component and a complementary ground component to provide service in all types of environments, i.e., outdoor and indoor coverage in urban, sub-urban and rural. This paper reports the studies on multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) extension to the existing DVB-SH standard. MIMO techniques are consi dered in this paper for achieving increased spectral efficiency and reliability in the challenging satellite and hybrid channel environments.

Golden Codes for Dual Polarized MIMO-OFDM Transmissions in Hybrid Satellite/Terrestrial Mobile Systems

This paper discusses the performance of Golden codes in a hybrid satellite/terrestrial system framework employing dual polarized MIMO-OFDM transmissions. Although the use of Golden codes in satellite and terrestrial scenarios has been studied independently, a realistic performance assessment must involve both components taking into account the relative delay between their reception. In fact, this work exploits the relative delay to create a multipath scenario and further improve the coding gain of the Golden codes, which is otherwise fixed. This is made possible by utilizing the Golden code in a Space-Frequency coding framework instead of the traditional Space-Time paradigm. The separation between the subcarriers constituting a Golden code is shown to be central to the coding gain enhancement and an algorithm to choose this separation is provided.