Joint Communications and Sensing for Hybrid Massive MIMO LEO Satellite Systems With Beam Squint

To improve the efficient utilization of spectral and hardware resources, joint communications and sensing (JCS) has drawn extensive attention. Most existing JCS works focus on terrestrial networks and can not be straightforwardly applied in satellite systems due to the significantly different electromagnetic wave propagation properties. In this work, we investigate the application of JCS in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) low earth orbit (LEO) satellite systems. We first characterize the statistical wave propagation properties by considering beam squint effects. Based on this analysis, we propose a beam squint-aware JCS technique for hybrid analog/digital massive MIMO LEO satellite systems exploiting statistical channel state information. Simulation results demonstrate that both the wireless communications and target sensing can be operated simultaneously with satisfactory performance, and the beam squint effects can be efficiently mitigated with the proposed method in typical LEO satellite systems.

Automated summary

This study investigates the application of joint communications and sensing (JCS) in massive MIMO LEO satellite systems. A beam squint-aware JCS technique is proposed based on the statistical wave propagation properties, which can efficiently mitigate the beam squint effects and enable simultaneous wireless communications and target sensing in typical LEO satellite systems.