Performance of a meteor-burst communication system using packet messages with variable data rates

The transmitted data rate is a function of the channel state and is varied in such a way as to keep the probability of bit error approximately constant. The performance measure of the system is the probability of successful message completion in a given time span T_D. Optimum operational signal-to-noise ratios are found as well as practical limits on the maximum and minimum transmission data rates. It is shown that the adaptive data rate feature provides a significant improvement in system performance as compared to a system transmitting at a fixed data rate. The performance improvement which can be obtained by the use of forward error correction coding is also analyzed. The codes considered are Reed-Solomon codes with rates of 1/3, 1/2, and 2/3. A much simpler expression for the probability of successful completion of a message is derived and used in the optimization search