Satellite Network Access with Shared Wide Beams for Inactive Cells
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing satellite cellular systems face challenges in minimizing gateway bandwidth requirements while maintaining network broadcast/access capabilities for both active and inactive cells within a satellite's field of view, especially in 3GPP bands that do not support 1.4 MHz channel bandwidth.
Innovation Solution
The system employs a flexible approach by using wide beams with adjustable channel bandwidth to cover clusters of cells, minimizing bandwidth usage for inactive cells and ensuring complete coverage of the satellite's field of view. This involves forming wide beams to cover multiple cells and using nominal beams only for active cells, thereby optimizing bandwidth allocation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If dedicated beams with network broadcast/access channels are provided for each cell without traffic, then network coverage is ensured, but gateway bandwidth consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple dedicated beams covering cells without traffic into a single shared beam. This shared beam carries network broadcast and access channels for multiple cells simultaneously, reducing the total number of beams and gateway bandwidth consumption while maintaining coverage for all inactive cells.
Solution Approach 2:
The shared beam is designed to serve multiple functions: it provides network broadcast channels and access channels for numerous inactive cells simultaneously. This multi-functional beam replaces multiple dedicated single-function beams, optimizing gateway bandwidth utilization.
2Ease of operation
If wider channel bandwidth is used for access in 3GPP bands not supporting 1.4 MHz, then access capability is improved, but gateway beam bandwidth requirement increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines access channels for multiple cells into a shared beam structure, allowing the use of wider bandwidth for access capability while distributing the bandwidth requirement across multiple cells. This prevents each individual cell from requiring its own wide bandwidth dedicated beam.
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically allocates bandwidth resources based on cell activity status. Active cells receive appropriate bandwidth allocation while inactive cells share bandwidth resources through the shared beam, optimizing overall gateway bandwidth utilization while maintaining access capability.
Data Source
AI summary
Within a satellite communications system, a base station communicates with standard compliant user equipment (UE) via a satellite having a field of view. The base station has a processor that instructs the satellite to generate a wide beam signal covering a plurality of cells in the field of view, and detects an access request from a user equipment within the plurality of cells over the wide beam signal. The base station, comprising a processing device such as an eNodeB, then generates one or more network broadcast/access signals that is uplink to a satellite and broadcasted via one or more nominal beams generated by the satellite, covering all the inactive cells, one of the plurality of cells having the access request.