Joon-Gyu Ryu's research while affiliated with Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute and other places

Recently, megaconstellations with a massive number of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites are being considered as a possible solution for providing global coverage due to relatively low latency and high throughput compared to geosynchronous orbit (GEO) satellites. However, as the number of satellites and operators participating in the LEO constellation increases, inter-satellite interference will become more severe, which may yield marginal improvement or even decrement in network throughput. In this article, we introduce the concept of satellite clusters that can enhance network performance through satellites’ cooperative transmissions. The characteristics, formation types, and transmission schemes for the satellite clusters are highlighted. Simulation results evaluate the impact of clustering from coverage and capacity perspectives, showing that when the number of satellites is large, the performance of clustered networks outperforms the unclustered ones. The viable network architectures of the satellite cluster are proposed based on the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standard. Finally, the future applications of clustered satellite networks are discussed.

This paper considers a downlink satellite communication system where a satellite cluster, i.e., a satellite swarm consisting of one leader and multiple follower satellites, serves a ground terminal. The satellites in the cluster form either a linear or circular formation moving in a group and cooperatively send their signals by maximum ratio transmission precoding. We first conduct a coordinate transformation to effectively capture the relative positions of satellites in the cluster. Next, we derive an exact expression for the orbital configuration-dependent outage probability under the Nakagami fading by using the distribution of the sum of independent Gamma random variables. In addition, we obtain a simpler approximated expression for the outage probability with the help of second-order moment-matching. We also analyze asymptotic behavior in the high signal-to-noise ratio regime and the diversity order of the outage performance. Finally, we verify the analytical results through Monte Carlo simulations. Our analytical results provide the performance of satellite cluster-based communication systems based on specific orbital configurations, which can be used to design reliable satellite clusters in terms of cluster size, formation, and orbits.

Recently, mega-constellations with a massive number of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites are being considered as a possible solution for providing global coverage due to relatively low latency and high throughput compared to geosynchronous orbit satellites. However, as the number of satellites and operators participating in the LEO constellation increases, inter-satellite interference will become more severe, which may yield marginal improvement or even decrement in network throughput. In this article, we introduce the concept of satellite clusters that can enhance network performance through satellites' cooperative transmissions. The characteristics, formation types, and transmission schemes for the satellite clusters are highlighted. Simulation results evaluate the impact of clustering from coverage and capacity perspectives, showing that when the number of satellites is large, the performance of clustered networks outperforms the unclustered ones. The viable network architectures of the satellite cluster are proposed based on the 3GPP standard. Finally, the future applications of clustered satellite networks are discussed.

In this paper, we propose random beam-based non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication systems that operate with frequency-division duplexing (FDD). Our system model consists of a massive-antenna satellite and multiple single-antenna users within its coverage area. The satellite selectively serves a subset of users based on a target signal-to-interference-plus-noise power ratio (SINR). In the random beam-based NOMA, the satellite utilizes random beams, where each beam can support multiple users using NOMA. To facilitate user selection and power allocation, each user provides several scalar values obtained from statistical channel state information (CSI) as feedback to the satellite. This allows us to reduce the computational complexity of beamforming design and minimize the feedback overhead for channel acquisition. We propose two random beam-based NOMA schemes with varying complexities and feedback overheads. We optimize these schemes by solving joint user selection and power allocation problems. The numerical results demonstrate that our proposed schemes outperform conventional random beamforming, specifically orthogonal multiple access (OMA) at each beam, by supporting a greater number of users.

This paper considers a downlink satellite communication system where a satellite cluster, i.e., a satellite swarm consisting of one leader and multiple follower satellites, serves a ground terminal. The satellites in the cluster form either a linear or circular formation moving in a group and cooperatively sending their signals by maximum ratio transmission precoding. We first conduct a coordinate transformation to effectively capture the relative positions of satellites in the cluster. Next, we derive an exact expression for the orbital configuration-dependent outage probability under the Nakagami fading by using the distribution of the sum of independent Gamma random variables. In addition, we obtain a simpler approximated expression for the outage probability with the help of second-order moment-matching. We also analyze asymptotic behavior in the high signal-to-noise ratio regime and the diversity order of the outage performance. Finally, we verify the analytical results through Monte Carlo simulations. Our analytical results provide the performance of satellite cluster-based communication systems based on specific orbital configurations, which can be used to design reliable satellite clusters in terms of cluster size, formation, and orbits.