A land mobile satellite communications propagation simulator

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Suh, Seong‐Youp | Stutzman, Warren L.^;

Affiliations: Satellite Communications Group, The Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061‐0111, USA

Note: [] Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 540 231 6834; Fax: +1 540 231 3355; E‐mail: [email protected].

Abstract: The performance of a mobile satellite communications link depends critically on the propagation path between the satellite and mobile users. Near L‐band frequencies the most important factors are multipath propagation and vegetative shadowing. System designers should have reliable information about the statistics of fades and fade duration in order to determine fade margin or to compensate for the fades using coding. This paper describes a simulator, called PROSIM (PROpagation SIMulator), developed at Virginia Tech. for simulating propagation conditions on land mobile links to geostationary earth orbit (GEO) satellites. However, PROSIM can also be used to low earth orbit (LEO) satellites. The simulator uses data from a random number generator to compute statistics of the propagation channel. Performance of the simulator was evaluated by comparing statistics from an analytical model and UHF‐band experimental data provided by W. Vogel of University of Texas at Austin and J. Goldhirsh of Johns Hopkins University. New expressions for phasor plot and its mathematical expression for lognormal channel were derived and simulated. Finally, the advantages of the simulator using random number generation in simulating the propagation model are described.

Journal: Space Communications, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 33-53, 1998