Unified Multibeam Satellite System Model for Payload Performance Analysis

This paper presents a novel unified multibeam satellite system model for the performance analysis of different satellite payloads. The model allows the analysis in terms of Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) and CoChannel Interference (CCI). Specifically we formulate the SINR as a function of the multibeam geometry for a given user location granularity. Furthermore, we apply our model to analyze the performance of two novel satellite payloads with respect to current conventional (CONV) ones using fixed frequency reuse and per-beam frequency/time assignment: the so-called “flexible” (FLEX) payload and the “beam-hopping” (BH) which allow a flexible per-beam frequency assignment and a flexible per-beam time assignment respectively. Our results show that CONV payloads achieve higher SINR values than BH and FLEX payloads at the expense of lower bandwidth assignment to the beams. Leading, therefore, to a trade-off, between received signal quality and resource management flexibility.