Satellite channel modelling using a Ray-tracing Tool for train communication

Pushed by international trends to develop intelligent transport systems, railways operators rely more and more on new information and communication technologies to optimize exploitation and maintenance costs but also to enhance the friendliness, comfort and security feeling of public transport by offering new services to passengers while traveling. There is not a lot of study dealing with this problem of high data rate services both in uplink and downlink directions in the case of high-speed trains. In our work we consider a double links architecture (terrestrial and satellite) with possible switch between the links versus availability. The paper focuses on satellite channel modelling. Several models have been developed to characterize the mobile satellite channel. Some of them are based on different states of signal reception. In this paper, the characterization with a 3D ray-tracing tool, of an existing mobile satellite communication channel model, the Karasawa model, based on a three states Markov chain, will be presented