Combined Robust Beamforming With Uplink RSMA for Multibeam Satellite Systems

In this paper, a robust uplink transmission scheme combining beamforming (BF) with rate splitting multiple access is proposed to improve the spectrum efficiency of a multibeam satellite system. By assuming that only imperfect channel state information is available, we first formulate an optimization problem to minimize the total transmit power under the constraints of individual transmit power budget and users’ rate requirements. Then, based on the successive convex approximation and difference-of-convex, we present an approach to convert the nonconvex constraints into convex ones, and obtain the BF vectors and power control parameters through iterative procedure. Finally, numerical results confirm the validity and superiority of our proposed scheme.