The Use of Coded Communications to Overcome Ionospheric Scintillation Fading

Abstract

In an effort to improve UHF satellite communications during the times it is affected by ionospheric scintillation fading, a simulation program was undertaken to investigate coding and interleaving. By making use of the times when the UHF signal is unfaded, it appears that forward error correcting coding can improve message readability. Interleaving of data bits is necessary to convert the long bursts of errors into a somewhat random error pattern which can be corrected by the coding. One-half rate binary feedback coding, one-half rate Viterbi coding and one-third rate Viterbi coding was tried. Various interleaving dimensions were also investigated. A UHF SATCOM channel with fading was simulated using actual scintillation fade data previously collected. The various types of coding/interleaving were played through the channel and the performance of each of these combinations was compared with the uncoded message. The results showed that an improvement in message readability can be achieved with coding/ interleaving. (Author)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 01, 1975
Accession Number
ADA014252

Entities

People

  • Allen L. Johnson
  • John H. Garrett

Organizations

  • Air Force Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Air Force Facilities
  • Artificial Satellites
  • Avionics
  • Coders
  • Coding
  • Communication Satellites
  • Communication Systems
  • Computer Programming
  • Computers
  • Decoding
  • Frequency
  • Ionospheric Scintillation
  • Satellite Communications
  • Simulations
  • Space Communications
  • Test And Evaluation

Readers

  • Computer Programming and Software Development.
  • Space/Atmospheric Physics.
  • Tactical Satellite Communications Systems Engineering.

Technology Areas

  • Space