Coordinated Multibeam Satellite Co-location: The Dual Satellite Paradigm

In the present article, a new system architecture for the next generation of satellite communication (SatComs) is presented. The key concept lies in the collaboration between multibeam satellites that share one orbital position. Multi-satellite constellations in unique orbital slots offer gradual deployment to cover unpredictable traffic patterns and redundancy to hardware failure advantages. They are also of high relevance during the satellite replacement phases or necessitated by constraints in the maximum communications payload that a single satellite can bear. In this context, the potential gains of advanced architectures, that is architectures enabled by the general class of cooperative and cognitive techniques, are exhibited via a simple paradigm. More specifically, the scenario presented herein, involves two co-existing multibeam satellites which illuminate overlapping coverage areas. Based on this scenario, specific types of cooperative and cognitive techniques are herein considered as candidate technologies that can boost the performance of multibeam satellite constellations. These techniques are compared to conventional frequency splitting configurations in terms of three different criteria, namely the spectral efficiency, the power efficiency and the fairness. Consequently, insightful guidelines for the design of future high throughput constellations of multibeam satellites are given.