[en] This paper presents an interference mitigation framework that can be applied on the user side for Non-Geostationary Satellite Orbit (NGSO) systems that share adjacent, overlapped frequencies to prevent unintentional co-frequency interference (CFI) scenarios. We introduce a novel Attention-based Beamformer (AttBF) model and explore its blind adaptive beamforming capabilities at the user terminals (UTs) side for spatial NGSO-to-NGSO downlink interference nulling, utilizing estimation-free data (e.g., received time-domain signals, frequency-domain representations, and sample covariance matrices (SCMs)) as direct inputs. We present a comprehensive performance evaluation of the proposed AttBF model against traditional deep learning (DL) models across various interference scenarios, encompassing both low spatial correlation (at UT’s side-lobe) and high spatial correlation (at UT’s main-lobe). To facilitate this research and future investigations into the interference management of NGSO systems, we implement innovative and extensive realistic satellite orbiting simulation and data generation methodologies, introducing new open datasets for the community. The results demonstrate that the proposed AttBF-based beamformer, particularly when employing SCMs input, achieves superior performance in mitigating interference compared to time-and frequency-domain inputs. Our findings highlight the enhanced nulling capabilities of the AttBF-based approach compared to DL-based models, such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs), and traditional methods, including zero forcing beamformer (ZFBF) and sample matrix inversion (SMI), underscoring the potential of advanced DL techniques for improving the reliability and efficiency of NGSO systems.
FNR16193290 - SmartSpace - Leveraging Artificial Intelligence To Empower The Next Generation Of Satellite Communications, 2021 (01/09/2022-31/08/2025) - Eva Lagunas
Funders :
Luxembourg National Research Fund
Funding number :
C21/IS/16193290
Funding text :
This research was funded by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) under the project SmartSpace (C21/IS/16193290). For the purpose of open access, and in fulfillment of the obligations arising from the grant agreement, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.
Dataset Description: Time series of received snapshots and sample covariance matrices (SCMs)
Commentary :
This dataset has been used in this work (please cite this reference in your work if you make use of this dataset): A. Saifaldawla, F. Ortiz, E. Lagunas and S. Chatzinotas, "Attention-Based Blind Adaptive Receive Beamforming for Interference Limited NGSO Satellite Systems," in IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, doi: 10.1109/OJCOMS.2025.3622661.
E. Lagunas, S. Chatzinotas, and B. Ottersten, “Low-Earth orbit satellite constellations for global communication network connectivity,” Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering, vol. 1, no. 10, pp. 656–665, 2024.
O. Kodheli, E. Lagunas, N. Maturo, S. K. Sharma, B. Shankar, J. F. M. Montoya, J. C. M. Duncan, D. Spano, S. Chatzinotas, S. Kisseleff, J. Querol, L. Lei, T. X. Vu, and G. Goussetis, “Satellite Communications in the New Space Era: A Survey and Future Challenges,” IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 70–109, 2021.
Y. He, Y. Li, and H. Yin, “Co-frequency interference analysis and avoidance between NGSO constellations: Challenges, techniques, and trends,” China Communications, vol. 20, no. 7, pp. 1–14, 2023.
C. Braun, A. M. Voicu, L. Simić, and P. Mähönen, “Should We Worry About Interference in Emerging Dense NGSO Satellite Constellations?” in 2019 IEEE International Symposium on Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks (DySPAN), 2019, pp. 1–10.
A. Saifaldawla, F. G. Ortiz, E. Lagunas, and S. Chatzinotas, “Convolutional Autoencoders for Non-Geostationary Satellite Interference Detection,” in IEEE International Conference on Communications (IEEE ICC). IEEE, 2024.
Starlink, “Setup guide,” https://api.starlink.com/public-files/installation_guide_standard_kit.pdf, (Accessed on 12/05/2025).
B. Van Veen and K. Buckley, “Beamforming: a versatile approach to spatial filtering,” IEEE ASSP Magazine, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 4–24, 1988.
A. B. Gershman, N. D. Sidiropoulos, S. Shahbazpanahi, M. Bengtsson, and B. Ottersten, “Convex Optimization-Based Beamforming,” IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 62–75, 2010.
H. L. Van Trees, Optimum array processing: Part IV of detection, estimation, and modulation theory. John Wiley & Sons, 2002.
H. A. Kassir, Z. D. Zaharis, P. I. Lazaridis, N. V. Kantartzis, T. V. Yioultsis, and T. D. Xenos, “A Review of the State of the Art and Future Challenges of Deep Learning-Based Beamforming,” IEEE Access, vol. 10, pp. 80 869–80 882, 2022.
Y. Omid, M. Aristodemou, S. Lambotharan, M. Derakhshani, and L. Hanzo, “Reinforcement learning-based downlink transmit precoding for mitigating the impact of delayed CSI in satellite systems,” arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.21489, 2024.
M. S. Rahman, E. Onggosanusi, H. Si, and J. Cho, “CSI feedback based on space-frequency compression,” in 2020 IEEE 17th Annual Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC), 2020, pp. 1–6.
S. Lin, J. An, L. Gan, M. Debbah, and C. Yuen, “Stacked Intelligent Metasurface Enabled LEO Satellite Communications Relying on Statistical CSI,” IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, vol. 13, no. 5, pp. 1295–1299, 2024.
A. Saifaldawla, F. Ortiz, E. Lagunas, A. B. M. Adam, and S. Chatzinotas, “GenAI-Based Models for NGSO Satellites Interference Detection,” IEEE Transactions on Machine Learning in Communications and Networking, vol. 2, pp. 904–924, 2024.
H. Yang, K.-Y. Lam, J. Nie, J. Zhao, S. Garg, L. Xiao, Z. Xiong, and M. Guizani, “3D Beamforming Based on Deep Learning for Secure Communication in 5G and Beyond Wireless Networks,” in 2021 IEEE Globecom Workshops (GC Wkshps), 2021, pp. 1–6.
G. Konstantopoulos and Y. Louët, “Deep Learning Aided Beamforming for Downlink Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access Systems,” IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, vol. 5, pp. 4337–4353, 2024.
J. Kim, H. Lee, S.-E. Hong, and S.-H. Park, “Deep Learning Methods for Universal MISO Beamforming,” IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, vol. 9, no. 11, pp. 1894–1898, 2020.
M. Fakharzadeh, S. H. Jamali, P. Mousavi, and S. Safavi-Naeini, “Fast Beamforming for Mobile Satellite Receiver Phased Arrays: Theory and Experiment,” IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 57, no. 6, pp. 1645–1654, 2009.
K.-X. Li, L. You, J. Wang, X. Gao, C. G. Tsinos, S. Chatzinotas, and B. Ottersten, “Downlink Transmit Design for Massive MIMO LEO Satellite Communications,” IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 70, no. 2, pp. 1014–1028, 2022.
X. Xie, X. Ding, and G. Zhang, “Interference Mitigation via Beamforming for Spectrum-Sharing LEO Satellite Communication Systems,” IEEE Systems Journal, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 5822–5830, 2023.
Z. Chen, L. Kuang, B. Liu, and Z. Ni, “Fast and Efficient Phase-Only Beam Nulling for NGSO Satellite Communication Systems,” IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, vol. 13, no. 12, pp. 3261–3265, 2024.
C. Vahapoglu, T. J. O’Shea, T. Roy, and S. Ulukus, “Deep learning based uplink multi-user simo beamforming design,” in 2024 IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning for Communication and Networking (ICMLCN), 2024, pp. 329–333.
P. Ramezanpour and M.-R. Mosavi, “Two-Stage Beamforming for Rejecting Interferences Using Deep Neural Networks,” IEEE Systems Journal, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 4439–4447, 2021.
A. Vaswani, N. Shazeer, N. Parmar, J. Uszkoreit, L. Jones, A. N. Gomez, Ł. Kaiser, and I. Polosukhin, “Attention is All You Need,” Advances in neural information processing systems, vol. 30, 2017.
R. Giuliano, E. Innocenti, F. Mazzenga, A. Vizzarri, L. Di Nunzio, P. B. Divakarachari, and I. Habib, “Transformer Neural Network for Throughput Improvement in Non-Terrestrial Networks,” in 2023 International Conference on Network, Multimedia and Information Technology (NMITCON), 2023, pp. 1–6.
S. Zhang, S. Zhang, W. Yuan, and T. Q. S. Quek, “Transformer-Empowered Predictive Beamforming for Rate-Splitting Multiple Access in Non-Terrestrial Networks,” IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 23, no. 12, pp. 19 776–19 788, 2024.
E. Lagunas, “FNR SmartSpace Project: Leveraging AI to Empower the Next Generation of Satellite Communications,” (Accessed on 12/05/2025). [Online]. Available: https://fnr-smartspace-project.uni.lu/datasets/
O. E. Ayach, S. Rajagopal, S. Abu-Surra, Z. Pi, and R. W. Heath, “Spatially Sparse Precoding in Millimeter Wave MIMO Systems,” IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 1499–1513, 2014.
L. You, K.-X. Li, J. Wang, X. Gao, X.-G. Xia, and B. Ottersten, “Massive MIMO Transmission for LEO Satellite Communications,” IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, vol. 38, no. 8, pp. 1851–1865, 2020.
W. Zhang, “Two-ray channel models with doppler effects for LEO satellite communications,” ITU Journal on Future and Evolving Technologies, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 243–259, 2024.
3GPP, “NR; Radio Resource Control (RRC); Protocol Specification,” 3GPP, Tech. Rep., September 2020.
W. L. Stutzman and G. A. Thiele, Antenna theory and design. John Wiley & Sons, 2012.
J. Andrés Vásquez-Peralvo, J. Querol, F. Ortíz, J. Luis González Rios, E. Lagunas, L. Manuel Garcés-Socorrás, J. Carlos Merlano Duncan, M. O. K. Mendonça, and S. Chatzinotas, “Multibeam Beamforming for Direct Radiating Arrays in Satellite Communications Using Genetic Algorithm,” IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, vol. 5, pp. 2343–2357, 2024.
H. Cox, R. Zeskind, and M. Owen, “Robust Adaptive Beamforming,” IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, vol. 35, no. 10, pp. 1365–1376, 1987.
D. Brooker, K. L. Gemba, and L. T. Fialkowski, “Overcoming snapshot-deficient measurements with knowledge-aided approaches,” JASA Express Letters, vol. 2, no. 5, 2022.
L. C. Godara, Smart Antennas. CRC Press, 2004.
P. Zhang, L. Pan, T. Laohapensaeng, and M. Chongcheawchamnan, “Hybrid Beamforming Based on an Unsupervised Deep Learning Network for Downlink Channels With Imperfect CSI,” IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, vol. 11, no. 7, pp. 1543–1547, 2022.
M. Inc., “Interference from satellite constellation on communications link - MATLAB & Simulink - MathWorks Benelux,” (Accessed on 12/05/2025). [Online]. Available: https://nl.mathworks.com/help/satcom/ug/interference-from-satellite-constellation-on-comms-link.html
F. Ortiz, V. M. Baeza, L. M. Garces-Socarras, J. A. Vásquez-Peralvo, J. L. Gonzalez, G. Fontanesi, E. Lagunas, J. Querol, and S. Chatzinotas, “Onboard Processing in Satellite Communications Using AI Accelerators,” Aerospace, vol. 10, no. 2, p. 101, Jan. 2023.
C. Lu, H. Li, and Z. Lin, “Optimized projections for compressed sensing via direct mutual coherence minimization,” Signal Processing, vol. 151, pp. 45–55, 2018. [Online]. Available: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165168418301464