Design considerations for a meteor burst acknowledgment link

Meteor burst communication (MBC) networks which allow a control station to communicate with remote terminals deployed over a large area have been considered. In some cases, the remote terminals are linked to each other by a local radio network. The control station message received via MBC is injected into the local radio network and disseminated to every terminal in the deployment area. In this manner, the MBC network takes advantage of the space diversity of the remote terminals to shorten the waiting time for a meteor trail that can support communications. The remote terminals acknowledge reception of control station messages. More than one remote terminal may receive the message and acknowledge at the same time. The authors consider the design and performance evaluation of the acknowledgment link. The statistics on the number of simultaneous acknowledgments is derived using an empirical footprint model, which describes the probability of simultaneous reception from a meteor trail. Techniques for dealing with simultaneous acknowledgments include a protocol to control the number of remote terminal transmissions; a direct sequence spreading waveform; and a tapped-delay-line receiver. The effectiveness of these techniques is quantified by making use of the empirical footprint model and a model of the receiver performance in a Monte-Carlo simulation