Dual Satellite STBC Combining Under Imperfect Symbol Time Alignment

Abstract

In distributed satellite communication systems, spatial diversity techniques such as Space-Time Block Coding (STBC) offer an attractive opportunity to enhance the link’s capabilities without additional spectrum consumption. One of the major challenges that still remains is the degradation of the Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR) at the receiver, primarily due to time misalignment between satellites. This paper presents a robust receiver architecture that demonstrates strong resilience against SINR degradation caused by time misalignment between satellites and maintains robust performance even under additional impairments such as power imbalance and Doppler shifts. Moreover, we present an efficient implementation of the receiver, which combines both software and hardware platforms.