Precoding-Aided Bandwidth Optimization for High Throughput Satellite Systems

Linear precoding boosts the spectral efficiency of the satellite system by mitigating the interference signal. Typically, all users are precoded and share the same bandwidth regardless of the user demand. This bandwidth utilization is not efficient since the user demand permanently varies. Hence, demand-aware bandwidth allocation with linear precoding is promising. In this paper, we exploited the synergy of linear precoding and flexible bandwidth allocation for geostationary (GEO) high throughput satellite systems. We formulate an optimization problem with the goal to satisfy the demand by taking into account that multiple precoded user groups can share the different bandwidth chunks. Hence, optimal beam groups are selected with minimum bandwidth requirement to match the per beam demand. The simulation results show that the proposed method of combining bandwidth allocation and linear precoding has better bandwidth efficiency and demand satisfaction than benchmark schemes.