Interference Mitigation and Synchronization for Satellite Communications

Within this thesis, the satellite broadcast scenario of geostationary satellites is reviewed. The densely crowded geostationary arc in the common broadcast frequencies may create significant interference from adjacent satellites (ASI). The possible use of multiple-input receivers and of interference processing techniques is analyzed in this specific context. In addition the synchronization problem is studied under interference limited conditions for broadcast as well as broadband satellite systems. We address fixed satellite broadcast reception with the goal of decreasing the aperture of the receiving antenna. The front-end antenna size is commonly defined by the presence of interference from adjacent satellites. A small antenna aperture leads to interference from neighboring satellites utilizing the same frequency bands. We propose a multi-input reception system with subsequent joint detection which provides reliable communication in the presence of multiple interfering signals. An iterative least square technique is adopted combining spatial and temporal processing. This approach achieves robustness against pointing errors and against changing interference scenarios. Different temporal interference processing methods are evaluated, including Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) based iterative soft-decision interference cancellation as well as Iterative Least Square with Projection (ILSP) based approaches, which include spatial and temporal iterations. Furthermore the potential of an additional convolutional channel decoding step in the interference cancellation mechanism is verified. Also, we demonstrate how to accurately synchronize the signals as part of the detection procedure. The technique is evaluated in a realistic simulation study representing the conditions encountered in typical broadcast scenarios. In a second part of the thesis the problem of synchronization is reviewed in the context of interference limited scenarios for broadband satellite return channels. Spectral efficiency is of great concern in the return channel of satellite based broadband systems. In recent work the feasibility of increased efficiency by reducing channel spacing below the Symbol Rate was demonstrated using joint detection and decoding for a synchronized system. We extend this work by addressing the critical synchronization problem in the presence of adjacent channel interference (ACI) which limits performance as carrier spacing is reduced. A pilot sequence aided joint synchronization scheme for a multi-frequency time division multiple access (MF-TDMA) system is proposed. Based on a maximum likelihood (ML) criterion, the channel parameters, including frequency, time and phase are jointly estimated for the channel of interest and the adjacent channels. The impact of ACI on the synchronization and detection performance is investigated. It is shown that joint channel parameter estimation outperforms single carrier synchronization with reasonable additional