Fade measurements at L-band and UHF in mountainous terrain for land mobile satellite systems

Fading results related to land mobile satellite communications at L-band (1502 MHz) and UHF (870 MHz) are described. These results were derived from an experiment performed in a series of canyon passes in the Boulder, Colorado region of the USA. The experimental configuration involved a helicopter as the source platform, which maintained a relatively fixed geometry with a mobile van containing the receiver and data-acquisition system. An unobstructed line of sight between the radiating sources and the receiving van was, for the most part, also maintained. In this configuration, the dominant mechanism causing signal fading (or enhancement) is a result of multipath. The resulting fade distributions demonstrated that at the 1% and 5% levels, 5.5 and 2.6 dB fades were on the average exceeded at L-band and 4.8 and 2.4 dB at UHF, respectively, for a path elevation angle of 45°. The canyon results as compared with previous roadside-tree-shadowing results demonstrate that the deciding factor dictating fade margin for future land mobile satellite systems is tree shadowing rather than fades caused by multipath