Link adaptation in mobile satellite links: schemes for different degrees of CSI knowledge

Abstract

SummaryWe consider the problem of modulation and coding scheme selection in the return link of a mobile satellite system. We propose to use an affine combination of both open loop and closed loop signal quality indicators to perform this selection. The combination weights are dynamically adapted according to the acknowledgement/negative acknowledgement (ACK/NAK) exchange between both ends, without making any assumptions on the channel distribution; this adaptation procedure is obtained as a stochastic programming solution to an optimization problem. We further extend our analysis to the particular case of not having information on the channel state, exploiting only ACK/NAK exchange for the rate selection problem. Simulation results will show the good performance of the proposed affine‐combination method compared with previous algorithms, and its robustness to environment changes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.