Capacity analysis and system optimization for the reverse link of multi-beam satellite broadband systems exploiting adaptive coding and modulation

This paper deals with the system capacity analysis and assessment of the potential advantages provided by the introduction of Adaptive Coding and Modulation (ACM) in the reverse link of multi‐beam broadband satellite systems. ACM is intended to increase the system throughput for a given terminal EIRP power by optimizing the individual links physical layer to the current channel conditions. The physical layer adaptation will be driven by the inbound demodulator signal over noise plus interference ratio (SNIR) estimation. A general methodology for ACM physical layer optimization based on the system capacity maximization is also illustrated. A theoretical analysis of ACM systems capacity is performed for both time division multiple access (TDMA) and code division multiple access (CDMA) schemes. As the exact analytical capacity computation results to be very complex while Monte Carlo approach leads to very time consuming simulations, a simplified semi‐analytic approach is devised. Numerical results showing the huge improvement in terms of capacity by the ACM adoption are obtained for both the semi‐analytic and the Monte Carlo approaches in a realistic study case corresponding to a Ka‐band multibeam satellite system. A good match between the two approaches is also demonstrated. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.