Abstract
Satellite communications (SatComs) have recently entered a period of renewed interest motivated by technological advances and nurtured through private investment and ventures. The present survey aims at capturing the state of the art in SatComs, while highlighting the most promising open research topics. Firstly, the main innovation drivers are motivated, such as new constellation types, on-board processing capabilities, non-terrestrial networks and space-based data collection/processing. Secondly, the most promising applications are described, i.e., 5G integration, space communications, Earth observation, aeronautical and maritime tracking and communication. Subsequently, an in-depth literature review is provided across five axes: i) system aspects, ii) air interface, iii) medium access, iv) networking, v) testbeds & prototyping. Finally, a number of future challenges and the respective open research topics are described.
Highlights
S INCE their inception, Satellite Communications (SatComs) have found a plethora of applications, including media broadcasting, backhauling, news gathering etc
A typical solution to this problem in single-user links relies on predistortion techniques, but their extension to multi-beam systems relying on precoding is not straightforward, because of the mutual correlation between the data streams induced by the precoding schemes
Due to the difficult access to satellite systems and its high costs, tools such as satellite system simulators/emulators, which in turn play a vital role in the development of proof of concepts (PoC)/testbeds are becoming increasingly relevant in satellite technology research
Summary
S INCE their inception, Satellite Communications (SatComs) have found a plethora of applications, including media broadcasting, backhauling, news gathering etc. Private ventures have led the development of a multitude of manufacturing and launching options, previously only reserved for governments and a handful of large international corporations This initiative named New Space has spawned a large number of innovative broadband and earth observation missions all of which require advances in SatCom systems. The purpose of this survey is to describe in a structured way these technological advances and to highlight the main research challenges and open issues.
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