Dual-Satellite Beam Illuminating Strategy for Load-Balanced LEO Beam Hopping Systems

With the rapid expansion of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations, ground user populations exhibit spatiotemporal heterogeneity in service demands. Traditional beam hopping (BH) strategies, where a single satellite illuminates one cell per time slot, suffer from throughput bottlenecks due to bandwidth and power constraints. This letter proposes a Dual-Satellite Beam Illuminating Strategy (DSBIS) to address this challenge. By leveraging angular isolation inherent in user-side phased array antennas, DSBIS selects satellite pairs within a cell’s visible range to enable full-frequency reuse while confining inter-beam interference below a 6% noise floor threshold. We establish geometric models to derive satellite selection criteria and validate feasibility using Starlink constellation parameters. Furthermore, we define hotspot cells and develop load-balancing algorithm as well as a BH pattern design based on DSBIS. Simulations demonstrate that DSBIS outperforms the benchmark algorithms in terms of load balancing, throughput, and delay, and enhances hotspot cell satisfaction rates.