Systems and methods for flexible assignment of beams to gateways in a high throughput digital payload satellite network

A method, comprising:

• for a first gateway earth station (GW), configuring a first virtual beam corresponding to a physical spot beam of a digital payload satellite that serves a plurality of terminals;
• for a second GW, configuring a second virtual beam corresponding to the physical spot beam;
• and
• serving one or more of the plurality of the terminals from the first GW with the first configured virtual beam or serving one or more of the plurality of the terminals from the second GW with the second configured virtual beam.

A system comprising:

• a first satellite gateway earth station (GW) communicatively coupled to a digital payload satellite and one or more of a plurality of terminals, wherein the digital payload satellite generates a physical spot beam that provides satellite network coverage to the plurality of terminals, the first GW configured with a first virtual beam to serve a first part of the spot beam's spectrum, the first part of the spot beam's spectrum corresponding to a first plurality of frequency carriers that are used by one or more of the plurality of terminals to communicate over the satellite network with the first GW;
• and
• a second GW communicatively coupled to the digital payload satellite and one or more of the plurality of terminals;
• the second GW configured with a second virtual beam to serve a second part of the spot beam's spectrum, the second part of the spot beam's spectrum corresponding to a second plurality of frequency carriers that are used by one or more of the plurality of terminals to communicate over the satellite network with the second GW.