Adaptive beamforming for large arrays in satellite communications systems with dispersed coverage

Abstract

Conventional multibeam satellite communications systems ensure coverage of wide areas through multiple fixed beams where all users inside a beam share the same bandwidth. We consider a new and more flexible system where each user is assigned his own beam, and the users can be very geographically dispersed. This is achieved through the use of a large direct radiating array (DRA) coupled with adaptive beamforming so as to reject interferences and to provide a maximal gain to the user of interest. New fast-converging adaptive beamforming algorithms are presented, which allow to obtain good signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR) with a number of snapshots much lower than the number of antennas in the array. These beamformers are evaluated on reference scenarios.