Two-level Precoding for High Throughput Satellites with non-Cooperative Gateways

This paper considers the design of an onboard beamforming network for a multibeam satellite managed by several gateways. This design, based on the SLNR (Signal-to-Leakage and Noise Ratio) criterion, can be fixed based on second-order statistics of the channel. The mitigation of the co-channel interference caused by the reuse of the spectral resources across beams is complemented by multi-cluster on-ground precoders, designed to fight the intra-cluster multiuser interference. These multicluster on-ground precoders are also able to limit some of the intra-cluster interference posed into the network in an autonomous way. Fruitful connections with recent twolevel interference mitigation schemes for terrestrial systems can be made.