Resource allocation for cognitive Satellite Communications in Ka-band (17.7–19.7 GHz)

In this paper, we consider the problem of resource allocation in the context of cognitive Satellite Communications (SatCom). In particular, we focus on the cognitive downlink access by Geostationary (GEO) Fixed Satellite Service (FSS) terminals in the band 17.7–19.7 GHz, where the incumbent users are Fixed-Service (FS) microwave links. Assuming a multiple Low Noise Block Converter (LNB) satellite receiver at the cognitive FSS terminal-side, an efficient receive beamforming technique combined with carrier allocation is proposed in order to maximize the overall downlink throughput as well as to improve the beam availability. The proposed cognitive exploitation framework allows the flexibility of using non-exclusive spectrum for the FSS downlink system, thus improving the overall system throughput. More importantly, the proposed approach is validated with the help of numerical results considering realistic system parameters.