Department of Electrical, Electronics, and Information Engineering

Digicomm Research

Active Antennas and Beamforming

Precoding example
Satellite Communication & Navigation Systems

Alessandro Guidotti, Ph. D.

a.guidotti@unibo.it
 System model
1

GEO HTS satellite operaing with FFR:

I transparent payload
I NB beams on-ground and NB on-board antennas
I linear precoding implemented on the user forward link
I single GW managing the (ideal) CSI
I TDM is implemented to serve one user per beam per time frame
I DVB-S2X ModCods
I phase offset to account for phase misalignment on-board
I Bessel antenna model

Alessandro Guidotti | Active Antennas and Beamforming - Precoding example

 Antenna radiation pattern
2

Transmitting antenna optimisation:

I we consider the NTN model with da = 5 m
I we obtain the ϑ3dB angle and, thus, the beam radius in uv coordinates

Alessandro Guidotti | Active Antennas and Beamforming - Precoding example

 Antenna radiation pattern
2

Transmitting antenna optimisation:

I we consider the NTN model with da = 5 m
I we obtain the ϑ3dB angle and, thus, the beam radius in uv coordinates

I we optimise the parameters of

the Bessel antenna (da , p, T ) so
as to keep −3 dB at ϑ3dB for the
beam at the SSP
I (da , p, T ) → (5 m, 0, −5.5 dB)

Alessandro Guidotti | Active Antennas and Beamforming - Precoding example

 Beam lattice
3

Hexagonal beam lattice assuming a maximum coverage angle of 1◦ :

In the considered configuration, NB = 151 and ϑ3dB = 0.0882◦ .

Alessandro Guidotti | Active Antennas and Beamforming - Precoding example

 On-ground radiation pattern I
4

beam 1 beam 10

Alessandro Guidotti | Active Antennas and Beamforming - Precoding example

 On-ground radiation pattern II
5

beam 53 beam 151

Alessandro Guidotti | Active Antennas and Beamforming - Precoding example

 Transmitted power I
6

We assume PT = 90 W, which is then reallocated by the MMSE precoder:

(SPC)
I with SPC, we obtain PT ,prec = 90 W, but no limitation per antenna
Alessandro Guidotti | Active Antennas and Beamforming - Precoding example
 Transmitted power II
7

(PAC)
I with PAC, we obtain PT ,prec = 90 I with MPC, we keep orthogonality
W and per antenna limitation, and per antenna limitation, but
(MPC)
loosing orthogonality PT ,prec = 23.66 W

Alessandro Guidotti | Active Antennas and Beamforming - Precoding example

 Performance: SINR
8

Alessandro Guidotti | Active Antennas and Beamforming - Precoding example

 Performance: SIR
9

Alessandro Guidotti | Active Antennas and Beamforming - Precoding example

 Average performance
10

KPI MMSE-SPC MMSE-MPC MMSE-PAC Non-precoded

SINR [dB] 15.91 9.53 10.93 5.43
SIR [dB] 33.94 33.94 13.28 5.43
Rate [bit/s/Hz] 4.65 2.77 3.32 1.89
Outage 0 0 0.39 0

Alessandro Guidotti | Active Antennas and Beamforming - Precoding example