Impact of buildings on the performance of MEO satellite mobile communication systems for low bit rate applications

Mobile communications for low bit rate applications via midearth orbit (MEO) satellites are considered. Owing to multipath interference, fading of the received signal appears in low bit rate applications. The received signal levels, at the mobile in the presence of buildings, are calculated using the uniform theory of diffraction (UTD) for horizontal and vertical polarisations. Buildings are considered in both residential and moderate urban environments. For easy reference, explicit mathematical representations with illustrations of all significant ray contributions are given. Furthermore, the signal levels data, extracted from the electromagnetics computations, are used to evaluate communication system performance in terms of bit error rate and depolarisation of the received signal. Moreover, computed results are in agreement with actual measured data.