Neural Network-Based Techniques for Efficient Detection of Variable-Bit-Rate Signals in MC-CDMA Systems Working over LEO Satellite Networks

For a few years, multicarrier modulations have been proposed as valuable alternatives with respect to state-of-the-art single carrier ones due to their resilience against interference and channel distortion effects. In particular, many studies are arising about multicarrier-CDMA (MC-CDMA) techniques that provide improved robustness and flexibility with respect to single-carrier spread-spectrum techniques. Satellite communications considered the employment of MC-CDMA for multimedia transmission very recently, especially for what concerns the delivery of variable-bit-rate services over low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite networks. To this aim, the problems to be faced are mainly related to the development of efficient methodologies for satellite channel estimation, equalization and multi-user detection, in order to exploit in an optimal way the natural diversity inherent to MC-CDMA. In this paper we compare two different neural-network-based approaches for efficient reception of MC-CDMA sign...