Frequency Resource Management Based on Model Predictive Control for Satellite Communications System

Yuma ABE  Hiroyuki TSUJI  Amane MIURA  Shuichi ADACHI  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences   Vol.E101-A   No.12   pp.2434-2445
Publication Date: 2018/12/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1337
DOI: 10.1587/transfun.E101.A.2434
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: Systems and Control
Keyword: 
satellite communications,  frequency resource management,  model predictive control,  sparse optimization,  

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Summary: 
We propose an approach to allocate bandwidth for a satellite communications (SATCOM) system that includes the recent high-throughput satellite (HTS) with frequency flexibility. To efficiently operate the system, we manage the limited bandwidth resources available for SATCOM by employing a control method that allows the allocated bandwidths to exceed the communication demand of user terminals per HTS beam. To this end, we consider bandwidth allocation for SATCOM as an optimal control problem. Then, assuming that the model of communication requests is available, we propose an optimal control method by combining model predictive control and sparse optimization. The resulting control method enables the efficient use of the limited bandwidth and reduces the bandwidth loss and number of control actions for the HTS compared to a setup with conventional frequency allocation and no frequency flexibility. Furthermore, the proposed method allows to allocate bandwidth depending on various control objectives and beam priorities by tuning the corresponding weighting matrices. These findings were verified through numerical simulations by using a simple time variation model of the communication requests and predicted aircraft communication demand obtained from the analysis of actual flight tracking data.