Spectrum Optimization for Satellite Communication Systems With Heterogeneous User Preferences

Owing to the proliferation of sophisticated satellite applications and rapid growth in data-consuming satellite services, refining spectrum efficiency remains a critical issue for satellite systems and has been promoted by the research community, mainly from the perspectives of spectrum reuse and dynamic spectrum access. In this paper, we propose a new approach to spectrum optimization for multibeam satellite systems—introducing a market-based pricing mechanism. In this paper, a key point to be highlighted is the challenge of building a market-inspired model that takes into consideration of satellite communication characteristics, and not only simply migrating spectrum pricing of terrestrial networks into satellite systems. In this connection, we propose a differential pricing scheme which formulates the optimization problem based on the Hotelling model. The differential pricing scheme is capable of addressing the heterogeneous and tremendous effects of long and rigorous satellite links on its spectrum. Numerical results are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed method in enhancing spectrum efficiency.