Integrated Sensing and Communications Enabled Low Earth Orbit Satellite Systems

TL;DR

This paper explores integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) systems for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites, highlighting techniques like opportunistic and optimized ISAC, with RSMA improving interference management and trade-offs.

Contribution

It introduces potential ISAC techniques for LEO satellite systems, emphasizing the effectiveness of rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) in optimizing performance.

Findings

RSMA effectively manages interference in LEO-ISAC systems.

Opportunistic and optimized ISAC techniques enhance spectrum utilization.

RSMA improves communication-sensing trade-offs.

Abstract

Extreme crowding of electromagnetic spectrum in recent years has led to the challenges in designing sensing and communications systems. Both systems require a broad range of bandwidth, thus resulting in competing interests in exploiting the spectrum. Efficient spectrum and hardware utilization have led to the emergence of integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) systems, which have recently emerged as a candidate 6G technology. In particular, we provide potential techniques, namely the opportunistic ISAC and optimized ISAC. Rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) is highlighted as an optimized ISAC technique for LEO-ISAC systems due to its effectiveness in simultaneously managing interference and enabling better communication-sensing trade-off performance.