Antenna diversity techniques for enhanced jamming resistance in multi-beam satellites

Military satellite communication (SATCOM) on-the-move (SOTM) is vulnerable for intentional and unintentional interference either from terrestrial or satellite jammers. The use of multiple receive antennas at satellite level or on ground provides the possibility for a more robust and secure transmission of sensitive data. In this paper, the performance of maximum-ratio combining (MRC) for multiple receive antennas is analyzed. The increase in jamming resistance of SOTM terminals using single-input-multiple-output (SIMO) transmission (with respect to the spectral efficiency) is compared to single-input-single-output (SISO) transmissions. The analysis demonstrates that using multiple adjacent beams at the satellite for antenna diversity in uplink, or combining signals from multiple mobile ground stations significantly improves the resistance against jamming for a given spectral efficiency.