Rotatable Antenna-Enabled Satellite Communication: Joint Design of Boresight Alignment and Beam Tracking

Ma T, Zheng B, You C, Liu R, Schober R (2026)

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2026

Journal

IEEE Wireless Communications Letters IEEE Communications Society

DOI: 10.1109/LWC.2026.3735296

Abstract

Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite links experience rapid angular variation due to high orbital velocities, which causes severe beam misalignment and array gain degradation under conventional fixed-antenna architectures. In this letter, we propose a rotatable antenna (RA)-enabled LEO communication framework, where RA arrays are deployed at both the satellite and the ground node (GN) to maintain directional alignment under high mobility. By leveraging the rank-one line-of-sight (LoS) channel structure inherent to satellite links, we derive closed-form solutions for the joint design of the transmit/receive beamforming and antenna boresight directions, revealing that optimal performance can be achieved via decoupled alignment across antennas with low computational complexity. To enable practical operation under dynamic conditions, we further develop a channel estimation and beam tracking protocol that exploits the predictable satellite orbit to continuously update boresight directions with low training overhead. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed RA-enabled design significantly outperforms fixed and random boresight baselines in terms of achievable rate and robustness to angular variations.

Authors with CRIS profile

Robert Schober Lehrstuhl für Digitale Übertragung (IDC)

Involved external institutions

Southern University of Science and Technology CN China (CN) ZTE Corporation China - Zhongxing Telecommunication Equipment Corporation / 中兴通讯股份有限公司 CN China (CN) South China University of Technology (SCUT) / 华南理工大学 CN China (CN)

How to cite

APA:

Ma, T., Zheng, B., You, C., Liu, R., & Schober, R. (2026). Rotatable Antenna-Enabled Satellite Communication: Joint Design of Boresight Alignment and Beam Tracking. IEEE Wireless Communications Letters. https://doi.org/10.1109/LWC.2026.3735296

MLA:

Ma, Tiantian, et al. "Rotatable Antenna-Enabled Satellite Communication: Joint Design of Boresight Alignment and Beam Tracking." IEEE Wireless Communications Letters (2026).

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