Enhancement of Satellite-To-Phone Link Budget: An Approach Using Distributed Beamforming

Small satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) attract much attention from both industry and academia. The latest production and launch technologies constantly drive the development of LEO constellations. However, wideband signals, except text messages or voice in a few Kbps, cannot be transmitted directly from a LEO satellite to a standard mobile cellular phone due to the insufficient link budget. The current LEO constellation network has to use an extra ground device to receive the signal from the satellite first and then forward the signal to the user equipment (UE). To achieve direct network communications between LEO satellites and UE, in this article, we propose a novel distributed beamforming technology based on the superposition of electromagnetic (EM) waves radiated from multiple satellites that can significantly enhance the link budget. EM full-wave simulation and Monte Carlo simulation results are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The simulation results show a nearly 6-dB enhancement using two radiation sources and an almost 12-dB enhancement using four sources. The received power enhancement could be doubled compared to the diversity gain in multiple-input, single-output (MISO). Furthermore, other practical application challenges, such as synchronization and the Doppler effect, are also presented.