Summary
The interest towards the deployment of Low Earth Orbit (LEO)/Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellite systems in several frequency bands is increasing due to the requirement of low latency for real‐time systems and high demand of broadband data. When the number of usable Non‐Geostationary (NGEO) satellites, that is, LEO/MEO in space, increases, the frequency coexistence between the NGEO satellite systems with the already existing geostationary (GEO) satellite networks becomes a requisite. In this context, it is crucial to explore interference mitigation techniques between GEO and NGEO systems in order to allow their spectral coexistence. More specifically, in the coexistence scenario of GEO and NGEO satellite networks, in‐line interference may be a serious problem, especially in the equatorial region. In this paper, we provide several frequency sharing studies in the context of the coexistence of an NGEO satellite link with another NGEO/GEO satellite link. Furthermore, we carry out interference analysis between GEO and MEO satellite systems considering the case of the O3b satellite system and propose an adaptive power control technique for both the uplink and downlink scenarios in order to mitigate the in‐line interference. Moreover, we suggest several cognitive solutions for mitigating the in‐line interference and provide future research issues. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.