Co-channel interference cancellation at the user terminal in multibeam satellite systems

We study the applicability of soft interference cancellation in the forward link of commercial multibeam satellite systems with focus on mobile terminals. We adopt a standard currently used in commercial satellite systems as a reference. The multibeam satellite antenna radiation diagram has been generated using a physical optics reflector model, while state-of-the art channel models have been used for the land mobile satellite (LMS) channel. The interference pattern has been derived through a system simulator developed by the European Space Agency (ESA). Starting from the analysis of the interference pattern we study the application of a low complexity soft interference cancellation scheme. Our results show that, under realistic interference and propagation conditions and for existing standards, a two-colors frequency reuse scheme can be employed while guaranteeing service availability across the coverage and keeping the complexity at the user terminals relatively low.