Systems and methods for supporting more flexible coverage areas and spatial capacity assignments using satellite communications systems are disclosed. A hub-spoke, bent-pipe satellite communications system includes: terminals; gateways; a controller for specifying data for controlling satellite operations in accordance with a frame definition including timeslots for a frame and defining an allocation of capacity between forward and return traffic. The satellite communications system may employ a satellite with a feed array assembly and may use on-board beamforming or ground-based beamforming. Beam hopping within timeslots of the frame may be used to provide coverage to different cells in different time periods. The flexible coverage areas may be provided using changes in satellite position, antenna patterns, or beam resource allocations.

Various arrangements are presented for optimizing data transmission between a satellite and a user equipment. A satellite gateway system may receive a message from the user equipment indicative of a current location of the user equipment. Data may be retrieved from the Internet to be transmitted to the user equipment via the satellite. The satellite gateway system may transmit a downlink message to the satellite that comprises the retrieved data and beam steering data. The beam steering data may instruct the satellite to target a downlink spot beam on the current location of the user equipment based on the message received from the user equipment. The retrieved data may be transmitted to the user equipment via the targeted downlink spot beam.

While suppressing a power consumption of an aerial-floating type communication relay apparatus, an interference in a multi-feeder link of a same frequency between the communication relay apparatus and plural gateway (GW) stations is suppressed. A relay communication station of the communication relay apparatus performs a first interference suppression process and a second interference suppression process by switching therebetween. The first interference suppression process suppresses an interference signal that causes an interference by a transmission signal transmitted from a gateway station and received with a directional beam corresponding to another gateway station, by using a propagation path response estimated with one frequency in a transmission signal band as an estimation frequency based on a reception result of a pilot signal without dividing a transmission signal band of a feeder link. The second interference suppression process divides a transmission signal band of a feeder link into plural divided frequency bands, and suppresses the interference signal by using a propagation path response estimated with one frequency in the divided frequency band as an estimation frequency based on a reception result of a pilot signal, for each of the divided frequency bands.

An example of a channelizer includes a plurality of receiver circuits, an individual receiver circuit including a frequency demultiplexer that is configured to demultiplex a plurality of subchannels and a time-division demultiplexer coupled to the frequency demultiplexer, the time-division demultiplexer configured to time-division demultiplex the plurality of subchannels to provide a plurality of time-division outputs, an individual time-division output including portions of data from each of the plurality of subchannels; and a plurality of switch circuits, each configured to receive a different time-division output of the plurality of time-division outputs from the individual receiver.

The disclosure relates in some aspects to enabling a user terminal (UT) to obtain information about nearby cells and any beams generated by nearby cells. For example, a network can send a neighbor cell list to UTs, where the list identifies the cells in that neighborhood and provides information about any beams generated by those cells. Thus, a UT can learn the neighboring beams/cells that the UT can reselect to if the current beam/cell becomes weak. In some aspects, the UE can learn the attitude (e.g., pitch, roll, yaw, or any combination thereof) profile of neighboring satellites as well as the pointing angles and the ON-OFF schedules of their beams. In some aspects, the UT can learn a start angle and a span for a satellite and use this information to identify a satellite the UT can reselect to if the current beam/cell becomes weak.

Systems, apparatuses, and methods provides for technology that controls a confocal antenna system. The technology controls an Integrated Phased Array (IPA) feed system to emit electromagnetic energy towards a sub-reflector, where the sub-reflector reflects the electromagnetic energy to a main reflector, and further where the main reflector receives and reflects the electromagnetic energy to form a radiation pattern on an area. The radiation pattern has a first size and a first gain. The technology conducts an identification that the radiation pattern is to be adjusted so as to adjust the first size to a second size and adjust the first gain to a second gain. In response to the identification, the technology moves the main reflector linearly along a first axis, and electronically steers a beam of the electromagnetic energy emitted from the IPA feed system towards the sub-reflector.

A system and method for scheduling a variable stayout distance when beam hopping, the method including providing an illumination area of a satellite and candidate beam centers disposed in the illumination area; measuring a respective scan angle from an antenna boresight to a respective beam center of the candidate beam centers; and determining a reuse factor k for each of the candidate beam centers, based on a proportion of the respective scan angle to a maximum scan angle. Each candidate beam center may be processed sequentially. Prior to adding each candidate beam center to a current beam center set, checking whether a candidate beam center meets the stayout distance criteria from all beam centers already in the beam center set.

Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described in which random access preambles may be designed to provide for relatively low inter-carrier interference (ICI) of adjacent available frequency resources in a non-terrestrial network (NTN). Random access preambles for NTN random access requests may be selected from a first set of random access preambles that are different from a second set of random access preambles for terrestrial random access requests. The first set of random access preambles may be a subset of the second set of random access preambles. The first set of random access preambles may be provided for contention-based random access (CBRA) and contention-free random access (CFRA) preambles may be configured by a base station from random access preambles that correspond to or are different from the second set of random access preambles.

This disclosure provides a beam information indication method and an apparatus. The terminal device obtains reference domain information of a plurality of beams and a first offset corresponding to each moment, to update beam domain information, where the first offset indicates an offset of domain information of the plurality of beams relative to the reference domain information of the plurality of beams. In technical solutions provided in this disclosure, domain information of the plurality of beams can be updated with low signaling overheads. The technical solutions may be applied to a satellite communication system, to implement interference management of satellite beams.

Embodiments provide in-flight configuration of satellite pathways to flexibly service terra-link and cross-link traffic in a constellation of non-processed satellites, for example, to facilitate flexible forward-channel and return-channel capacity in a satellite communications system. For example, each satellite in the constellation can include one or more dynamically configurable pathway and switching and/or beamforming can be used to configure each pathway to be a forward-channel pathway or a return-channel pathway in each of a number of timeslots according to a pathway configuration schedule. At least some of the pathways can be further selectively configured, in each timeslot, to carry “terra-link” traffic to and/or from terrestrial terminals and “cross-link” traffic to and/or from one or more other satellites of the constellation.