Demand-based Scheduling for Precoded Multibeam High-Throughput Satellite Systems

The growing demand for broadband applications has driven the satellite communication service providers to investigate High Throughput Satellite (HTS) solutions. While precoding has been identified as the most promising technique to boost the satellite spectral efficiency, new advanced solutions focus on re-configurable demand-driven systems, where throughput delivered aligns with the time and geographical variations of the traffic demand. For such goal, conventional user scheduling algorithms fail to meet the uneven user traffic demand. In this paper, we propose a novel unicast scheduling algorithm that takes into account both the channel orthogonality required for precoding along with the particular user demands. We name such technique as Weighted Semi-Orthogonal Scheduling (WSOS) methodology. Supporting numerical results are provided that validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheduling and quantify the benefits over conventional scheduling techniques.