Multi-User Detection Performance Demonstrator for Realistic High Throughput Satellite Systems

Multi-beam satellite systems gain capacity from frequency reuse in the forward link, but they suffer from inter-system interference problems. Multi-user detection (MUD) is an advanced interference mitigation technique applied at the user terminal to cope with co-channel interferences. This paper complements theoretical studies on the efficiency of MUD by the development of a system performance demonstrator allowing the analysis of MUD performance limits under realistic channel conditions. A two-color system is assumed and compared to a traditional four-color application, which is to be used as a benchmark. By the application of MUD, a performance gain in peak and system throughput can be observed, while requiring higher complexity at the user terminal.