Cumulant based operating point estimation for communication satellite transponders

A particular problem in satellite communications is the estimation of the current operating point of a bent-pipe transponder. Various special effects aggravate this estimation problem, among which the capture effect, gain compression, unknown attenuation in the transmission channel, or noisy received signals are the most prominent. In most practical cases, operators desire a fully blind estimator that is nevertheless able to cope with these unwanted impairments. We provide the theoretical background and further results on a novel estimator based on signal statistics that enables accurate operating point estimation in multicarrier operation as well as in single carrier mode with higher-order modulation. In this paper we focus on three basic use cases for our estimator, and we discuss results on the estimation accuracy.