Turbo coded software radio performance over a UHF satellite channel

The end-to-end performance of a turbo-coded waveform is measured on a MIL-STD-188-181 UHF satellite communications channel. The waveform implements a coherent BPSK modulation with a rate 1/2 turbo code on a software radio test-bed. All baseband transmitter and receiver functions are performed by software modules hosted on commercial hardware, specifically programmable digital signal processors and a general-purpose microprocessor. The software radio interfaces with standard UHF satellite communications transceivers at their 70 MHz intermediate frequency. Bit error rate performance is measured and compared with laboratory hardware loop-back tests and Monte Carlo simulations.