FlexSAT - Resource Optimization for Next Generation of Flexible SATellite Payloads

Title: FlexSAT - Resource Optimization for Next Generation of Flexible SATellite Payloads 
Funding source: FNR CORE Junior Track
Prime Contractor: SnT
Partners: SES, atlanTTic - University of Vigo (Spain)
Principal investigator: Dr. Eva Lagunas
Researchers:  Dr. Steven Kisseleff, Dr. Lei Lei, Dr. Jorge Querol, Prof. Bjorn Ottersten (local scientific advisor), Prof. Carlos Mosquera (external scientific advisor), Dr. Joel Grotz (SES, industrial advisor)
PhD Student: Lin Chen

Project Overview:

Nowadays, the satcom industry is witnessing a revolution regarding the space segment, with the full payload digitalization. The latter is arguably one of the most exciting developments in the satcom industry to date since enables more sophisticated payload designs able to adapt the satellite resources to the real and moving traffic conditions. The aforementioned flexibility combined with the interference management strategies open a door to advanced resource management strategies for flexible satellite systems, but at the same time bring new research challenges, which have to be addressed so that the full potential of flexible payloads is unleashed.

“FlexSAT” stands for “Resource Optimization for Next Generation of Flexible SATellite Payloads”, and is based on the SES view of the future satellite systems, which will include an intelligent unit called Satellite Dynamic Resource Management (SDRM). The SDRM interconnects in an automated manner the network operational center (NOC) and the satellite operations (SOC), and represents the intelligence of the system. The main goal of SDRM is to achieve a traffic and link condition based automated network resources optimization. FlexSAT will try to optimize the algorithmics behind the SDRM block.

FlexSAT will investigate and develop advanced resource allocation solutions that fit the future payload capabilities and satisfy the satellite operators’ interests. Instead of boosting the satellite throughput (which has been the objective of many previous works), the goal of FlexSAT is to assigned the available resources in such a way that the satellite offered capacity on ground continuously matches the geographic distribution of the traffic demand and follows its variations in time. More precisely, FlexSAT will investigate and proposed novel algorithmic solutions for:

1) Dynamically assigning frequency / bandwidth and power over the coverage area

2) Dynamically design the illumination of active beams over time (beam hopping pattern)

3) Demand-based user scheduling

4) Load balancing in Multi-Gateway (GW) systems, to relax the feeder link congestion

 

Project Partner: 

• atlanTTic, Research Center, Vigo, Spain

Project Start Date: 01/03/2020

Project Duration: 3 years

Project Team:

Principal Investigator: Dr Eva Lagunas

Research Team: 

• Dr Steven Kisseleff, Research Scientist
• Dr Lei Lei, Research Scientist
• Dr Jorge Querol, Research Associate
• Lin Chen, PhD Student
• Local scientific advisor: Prof. Bjorn Ottersten
• External scientific advisor: Prof. Carlos Mosquera, University of Vigo, Spain
• Industrial advisor: Dr Joel Grotz, SES

Contact: 

• Dr Eva Lagunas, Research Scientist