Adaptive coding and modulation techniques for mobile satellite communications: A state estimation approach

In the last years we are witnessing the increasing presence of multimedia application, in a wide variety of terminals, from the PC to the notebook, from the smartphone to the tablet. In order to exploit such advanced services the requirement is to have an ubiquitous and broadband connection. While urban or suburban areas can be covered by using terrestrial wireless broadband networks, there are several rural or low populated areas with narrowband access. To this aim, satellite technologies allow to cover very large areas. However, they still have some issues in covering mobile users with broadband connections. One of the most important approaches is to develop adaptive waveforms techniques able to exploit the variable channel behavior. Adaptive coding and modulation (ACM) belongs to this family of algorithms, by adapting the modulation and coding scheme based on the channel behavior. In this paper a comparison among three different techniques is proposed by focusing on a state approach for increasing the user throughput, and considering different mobile speeds.