Filter Bank-based Multiple Access in Next Generation Satellite Uplinks: A DVB-RCS2-based Experimental Study

In the context of the on-going evolution of satellite communications (SatCom) systems to their next generation, and in the direction of their integration with 5th generation (5G) terrestrial networks, it is of interest to study in depth the applicability in realistic SatCom of waveforms that have shown promise to meet the 5G requirements. This paper presents a comparative study, based on total degradation (TD), of frequency division multiple access (FDMA) schemes employing offset quadrature amplitude modulation-based filter bank multicarrier (FBMC/OQAM), classical orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) and their single-carrier counterparts, to illustrate the potential gains from the integration of the FBMC waveforms in the satellite context and standards. The air interface considered follows the digital video broadcasting (DVB) family of standards for the satellite uplink.