IJSCN Special Issue on ASMS/SPSC 2010

This special issue of the Wiley International Journal of Satellite Communications and Networking hosts a selection of papers from the 5th Advanced Satellite Multimedia Systems (ASMS) Conference and the 11th Signal Processing for Space Communications (SPSC) Workshop, held in Cagliari, Italy, on September 13–15, 2010. The joint event was organized through a collaborative effort of the University of Bologna, the Institute of Communications and Navigation of DLR (German Aerospace Center), the European Space Agency (ESA), under the auspices of the Integral SatCom Initiative European Technology Platform and in cooperation with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of the University of Cagliari. The ASMS conference and SPSC workshop have become recognized events for industry and research institutions to exchange up-to-date information about recent advances and emerging technologies in the field of mobile satellite communication systems. The ESA’s SPSCworkshop dates back to1988 when pioneering work in the field of digital signal processing for satellite communications was first presented by worldwide authorities in the field. In addition, following the successful path opened by the 2006 edition of ASMS and continued with the 2008 edition, the scope of the conference has been further widened, as the small though important change in its name by replacing the word ‘mobile’ with ‘multimedia’ testifies. This is remarkable not only because the major part of the SatCommarket belongs to broadcasting and broadband access operators but fundamentally because the convergence of broadcast, mobile, and fixed satellite communications is essential to offer seamless connectivity anywhere at anytime, which is recognized as the key element for the successful deployment of future satellite systems. This issue collects the extended versions of five of the best papers presented at the last ASMS/SPSC joint event. The papers have been selected with the aim of providing an insight in the developments and findings in this exciting field. The first paper addresses nonbinary low-density parity-check (LDPC) code constructed using ultrasparse matrices. A comparison with standardized binary LDPC and turbo codes shows that larger coding gains can be achieved on the additive white Gaussian noise channel. In particular, in the short block length regime, the new codes gain more than 1 dB with respect to the binary LDPC codes recently proposed for the next generation up-link standard of the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems.