Multibeam Satellite Communication System and Method, and Satellite Payload for Carrying Out Such a Method

摘要

A satellite communication system including a multibeam satellite for generating a plurality of feeder beams and a plurality of user beams over a region of interest, a plurality of spatially-separated gateway stations for providing feeder links to said multibeam satellite via respective feeder beams; and a control for operating said gateway stations and multibeam satellite such that: in nominal conditions, NGW gateway stations exchange data with K user beams, each of the gateway stations allocating a fraction of its bandwidth to each of the user beams; and in case of fading, data are switched from faded to unfaded gateway stations, whereby none of said user terminals experiences service outage. A method of performing satellite communication using the satellite communication system, and a multibeam communication satellite payload for carrying out the method are provided.

主权项

1. A satellite communication system comprising:
a multibeam satellite for generating a plurality of feeder beams and a plurality of user beams over a region of interest; a plurality of spatially-separated gateway stations for providing feeder links to said multibeam satellite via respective feeder beams; a communication network interconnecting said gateway stations; and means for detecting at least one degraded feeder link; wherein the system further comprises control means for operating said gateway stations and multibeam satellite such that: in nominal conditions, a set of NGW gateway stations exchanges data with user terminals situated within the footprints of K>1 user beams, each of said gateway stations allocating a fraction of its bandwidth to each of said user beams, and each of said user terminals exchanging data with a single gateway station of the set; and in the event of degradation of one or more feeder links, data are switched from gateway stations associated to degraded feeder links to gateway stations associated to non-degraded feeder links using said communication network, whereby none of said user terminals experiences service outage.