Coding and multiple access protocols for land-mobile satellite data networks.

Abstract

In land mobile satellite communications, the mobiles share the same channel for the transmission of their messages towards the satellite. Therefore a multiple access scheme that regulates the access to the channel must be employed. In this thesis, we compare the performance of four different access techniques for the case of land mobile data networks. A hybrid ARQ scheme based on Reed-Solomon codes is used to combat the error bursts resulting from multipath fading and shadowing. The influence on the efficiency of the system of parameters such as code rate, block length, guard time and error rate on the acknowledgement channel is evaluated. The advantages of using symbol interleaving and erasure decoding are also discussed.