Adaptive hierarchical coding and modulation scheme over satellite channels

In this study, a new scheme called adaptive hierarchical coding and modulation has been proposed, based on Adaptive Coding and Modulation (ACM) and hierarchical modulation (HM). The primary contribution of this study is summarised as the following aspects. Firstly, 16- to 64-APSK constellations with size and labelling optimisation method are proposed for HM, which can be adapted to transmitting multiple hierarchies with different QoS streams and to the non-linear satellite channels due to a lower peak-to-average power ratio compared to traditional hierarchical QAM modulation. Bit channel capacity and Chernoff error bound are introduced to optimise size and labelling of the constellation with interior-point algorithm and modified binary switch algorithm for a specific channel model to get a better performance. Secondly, combining with optimised constellations, coding and modulation modes set is obtained from using constellation design and optimisation method, with different modulation orders and code rates. And over satellite channels with rain and location attenuation, the proposed scheme is able to adapt itself to a changing channel condition and increase the transmission rate compared with ACM schemes of DVB-S2 and DVBS2X standard.