LEO Satellite Beam Hopping for Power Consumption Minimization at Different Elevation Angles

Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication promises to bridge the digital divide. As satellite payload is limited, methods such as beam hopping techniques are necessary to ensure that the scarce resources are used efficiently. Current literature lacks sufficient studies on the effects of LEO satellite movement on the system behavior. To help bridge this gap, this paper analyzes the performance of beam hopping techniques in dependence on the elevation angle. We consider downlink transmission of a multi-beam LEO satellite operating in the Ka-band (30 GHz). An established beam hopping scheme from geosynchronous equatorial orbit (GEO) satellite systems is adapted to LEO systems and an interference-aware greedy beam hopping algorithm is developed. The two proposed algorithms are compared to three benchmarks (exhaustive search, random beam hopping, and full illumination) under consideration of different satellite elevation angles. Simulation results show that the interference-aware proposed method performs close to optimal and outperforms the GEO-adapted scheme, especially at low elevation angles. The results confirm that a significant power consumption reduction at the satellite can be achieved with beam hopping techniques, especially in networks under low utilization.