MIMO for Mobile Satellite Digital Broadcasting: From Theory to Practice

This paper presents the detailed design and the key system performance results of a comprehensive laboratory demonstrator (testbed) for a hybrid satellite/terrestrial S-band mobile digital broadcasting system. The physical layer is based on an enhanced version of the digital video broadcasting-satellite to handheld (DVB-SH) standard, exploiting dual-polarization multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) technology. This complete digital MIMO demonstrator, which is the first of its kind, allows for an in-depth verification and optimization of the MIMO techniques applied to satellite broadcasting networks. Moreover, this demonstrator allows for complementing and confirming the theoretical or simulation-based findings published thus far. It is shown that dual-polarization MIMO diversity is able to provide remarkable gains in terms of satellite/terrestrial transmit power reduction and/or capacity increase compared with more conventional non-MIMO solutions. It is also demonstrated that the adoption of a relatively simple spatial multiplexing MIMO technique represents the best way to grasp these gains. This paper provides an extensive set of laboratory measurement results for existing stochastic satellite and hybrid MIMO channels, as well as results based on an S-band satellite-measured dual-polarization time series recently collected during a campaign sponsored by the European Space Agency. Results obtained using MIMO techniques are also compared with a dual- and single-polarization single-input-single-output (SISO) DVB-SH benchmark system and with computer simulation results.