The Advanced Satcom Systems and Operations Group is involved in a combination of research, proof-of-concept test beds, and system engineering/application efforts focused on the goals of enhancing the capacity, the robustness to interference, and the flexibility of future generations of communications satellites, as well as line-of-sight radio communications systems. Current research is concentrating on the design and performance of advanced waveforms (including higher-order signaling constellations and iterative demodulation/decoding), the construction of flexible, adaptive wideband frequency plans, robust acquisition and tracking techniques, dynamic resource-allocation protocols, and advanced networking strategies. Promising research results are verified in hardware/software proof-of-concept implementations that provide quantitative performance data as well as complexity information. The group’s system engineering activities apply new concepts and technologies to specific communica...