Link margin for UHF airborne satellite communications (SATCOM) operation

Author

Franke, Ernie ; Vaal, Greg

Author_Institution

ECI Div., E-Syst., St. Petersburg, FL, USA

Volume

1

fYear

1996

fDate

20-23 May 1996

Firstpage

90

Abstract

SATCOM link performance for aircraft operation tends to be marginal, especially at high latitude operation or during maneuvers. The weak components of the link (antenna gain and multipath fading) have been examined. The weapons to combat negative link margin are increased antenna gain, lower system noise figure, FEC and, diversity. Input noise figure is about as low as it can go, due to the inherent loss of the SATCOM duplexer. To maintain hemispherical coverage, additional antennas must be combined with quadrature diversity. Finally FEC is employed to maintain link margin, but the user must be willing to operate at a data rate less than the SATCOM channel capacity for unencoded data

Keywords

aircraft communication; diversity reception; fading; forward error correction; military communication; multipath channels; satellite communication; FEC; SATCOM link performance; UHF airborne satellite communications; aircraft operation; antenna gain; channel capacity; hemispherical coverage; high latitude operation; link margin; multipath fading; quadrature diversity; system noise figure; unencoded data; Aircraft; Artificial satellites; Bandwidth; Earth; Fading; Forward error correction; Satellite antennas; Satellite communication; Transponders; UHF antennas;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Aerospace and Electronics Conference, 1996. NAECON 1996., Proceedings of the IEEE 1996 National

Conference_Location

Dayton, OH

ISSN

0547-3578

Print_ISBN

0-7803-3306-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NAECON.1996.517621

Filename

517621