Space-Time Rate-Splitting Multiple Access for Multibeam LEO Satellite Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a space-time rate-splitting multiple access framework for multibeam LEO satellite networks, improving robustness and performance by integrating space-time coding and optimized power allocation.

Contribution

It proposes a novel ST-RSMA scheme with space-time coding and a WMMSE algorithm for joint optimization, enhancing multibeam LEO satellite communication performance.

Findings

ST-RSMA outperforms conventional RSMA and other multiple access methods.

The scheme achieves full diversity gain in common stream transmission.

Numerical results demonstrate significant performance improvements.

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel space-time rate-splitting multiple access (ST-RSMA) framework for multibeam low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications (SATCOM) systems, where space-time coding is integrated into the common stream transmission. This design enables full diversity gain in the common stream transmission for all users, regardless of the uncertainty of the channel state information (CSI) and network load conditions, thereby overcoming the performance limitations of conventional RSMA that employs a single beamforming vector for all users. To further enhance performance, we develop a weighted minimum mean square error (WMMSE)-based algorithm tailored to ST-RSMA that jointly optimizes the power allocation for the common stream and the power/beamforming vectors for private streams, aiming to maximize the minimum user rate. Numerical results show that ST-RSMA significantly outperforms conventional RSMA and other multiple access techniques, offering a robust and scalable solution for LEO SATCOM.