Iterative interference cancellation for high spectral efficiency satellite communications

The problem of efficient utilization of the frequency spectrum for satellite systems is investigated; one which results as a consequence of highly crowding adjacent channels. An analytical characterization of the resulting interference channel is introduced and then exploited for interference cancellation. Two classes of cancelers are investigated. The first approach does not benefit from the forward error control (FEC) coding information which limits the performance gain. This motivates the second approach where a joint implementation of interference cancellation and decoding is developed using soft-input–soft-output (SISO) modules along with the iterative structure. It is shown that iterative interference cancellation techniques can achieve significant gains compared with the single-user matched filter receiver.