Arcidiacono Antonio, Finocchiaro Daniele, De Gaudenzi Riccardo, Del Rio-Herrero Oscar, Cioni Stefano, Andrenacci Marco, Andreotti Riccardo
European Broadcasting Union (EBU), L'Ancienne-Route 17A, 1218 Le Grand-Saconnex, Switzerland.
Eutelsat, 32 boulevard Gallieni, 92130 Issy-les-Moulineaux, France.
Sensors (Basel). 2021 Jun 23;21(13):4290. doi: 10.3390/s21134290.
Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) technologies are considered key technologies for terrestrial 5G massive machine-type communications (mMTC) applications. It is less known that NOMA techniques were pioneered about ten years ago in the satellite domain to match the growing demand for mMTC services. This paper presents the key features of the first NOMA-based satellite network, presenting not only the underlying technical solutions and measured performance but also the related deployment over the Eutelsat satellite fleet. In particular, we describe the specific ground segment developments for the user terminals and the gateway station. It is shown that the developed solution, based on an Enhanced Spread ALOHA random access technique, achieves an unprecedented throughput, scalability and service cost and is well matched to several mMTC satellite use cases. The ongoing R&D lines covering both the ground segment capabilities enhancement and the extension to satellite on-board packet demodulation are also outlined. These pioneering NOMA satellite technology developments and in-the-field deployments open up the possibility of developing and exploiting 5G mMTC satellite- and terrestrial-based systems in a synergic and interoperable architecture.
非正交多址接入（NOMA）技术被视为陆地5G大规模机器类型通信（mMTC）应用的关键技术。鲜为人知的是，NOMA技术大约在十年前在卫星领域率先出现，以满足对mMTC服务不断增长的需求。本文介绍了首个基于NOMA的卫星网络的关键特性，不仅展示了底层技术解决方案和实测性能，还介绍了在欧洲通信卫星公司卫星群上的相关部署。特别是，我们描述了用户终端和网关站的特定地面段发展情况。结果表明，基于增强型扩展ALOHA随机接入技术开发的解决方案实现了前所未有的吞吐量、可扩展性和服务成本，并且与多个mMTC卫星用例非常匹配。还概述了正在进行的研发方向，包括地面段能力增强以及向卫星机载分组解调的扩展。这些开创性的NOMA卫星技术发展和实地部署为以协同和可互操作架构开发和利用基于5G mMTC的卫星和地面系统开辟了可能性。
