Rate-Splitting Multiple Access for Multibeam Satellite Communications

This paper studies the beamforming design problem to achieve max-min fairness (MMF) in multibeam satellite communications. Contrary to the conventional linear precoding (NoRS) that relies on fully treating any residual interference as noise, we consider a novel multibeam multicast beamforming strategy based on Rate-Splitting Multiple Access (RSMA). RSMA relies on linearly precoded rate-splitting (RS) at the transmitter and Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) at receivers to enable a flexible framework for non-orthogonal transmission and robust interbeam interference management. Aiming at achieving MMF among multiple co-channel multicast beams, a per-feed available power constrained optimization problem is formulated with different quality of channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). The superiority of RS for multigroup multicast and multibeam satellite communication systems compared with conventional scheme (NoRS) is demonstrated via simulations.