Evaluation of depolarization effects on the performance of satellite communications

In this paper we study the depolarization effects caused weather conditions and scattering structures at ground level on the performance of a multiple satellite system employing multi-polarized compact MIMO antenna configurations. In order to reinforce the analysis, we first propose a novel multi-channel simulator that produces realistic time-series of the fading process affecting signal transmission in satellite communication environments. The proposed simulator takes into account the temporal, spatial and polarization properties affecting these processes. Finally, we analyse the impact of depolarization on the total capacity of the tetrahedron Compact MIMO antenna system. Simulation results show a significant drop in performance as the cross polar discrimination decreases.