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A Heterogeneous Multiagent Reinforcement Learning Approach for Robust Uplink Beamforming in Maritime Satellite Communications

delete2026-07-20
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PRE
AI
H
Huayuan Wang
B
Bodong Shang
陶梅霞 (Meixia Tao)
DOI:10.1109/taes.2026.3715439delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
Maritime satellite communications (SATCOMs) are expected to support high-capacity ship-to-satellite uplinks for remote maritime services beyond terrestrial coverage, with low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites providing wide-area connectivity. However, robust uplink beamforming in LEO maritime SATCOMs is challenging because dynamic ship–satellite geometry, wave-induced attitude motion, imperfect channel state information, and multiship interference make transmit power, ship-side transmit beamforming, and satellite-side receive combining tightly coupled. Accordingly, we formulate a long-term spectral efficiency (SE) maximization problem under transmit-power and quality-of-service constraints. An attitude-aware uplink channel model is developed by incorporating roll, pitch, and yaw motions into the effective angle-of-departure/angle-of-arrival evolution. Based on this model, the problem is cast as a heterogeneous decentralized partially observable Markov decision process. We then propose a robust heterogeneous cooperative QMIX (RHC-QMIX) framework under centralized training and decentralized execution, where type-specific recurrent local Q-networks, history-refined angular features, and centralized monotonic value mixing coordinate ship and satellite agents. Extensive simulations demonstrate that in the load-controlled scalability evaluation, RHC-QMIX achieves an average network SE of 25.32 bps/Hz, improves over alternating optimization by up to 51.00% as the satellite load increases, and outperforms heterogeneous cooperative QMIX by 16.38% on average under network-size scaling; it also maintains more stable SE under severe sea-state-induced ship motion.
Keywords:
Heterogeneous multiagent reinforcement learning (MARL)
maritime satellite communications (SATCOMs)
QMIX
robustness
uplink beamforming

Journal

IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems cover
IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems
IF:
5.7
Papers:
651
Citations:
2.4W

Organization

S
shanghai jiao tong university
Scholars:
15.1W
Papers: 11.5W
Citations: 159
E
Eastern Institute of Technology
Scholars:
551
Papers: 395
Citations: 825
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