A new simple model for land mobile satellite channels: first- and second-order statistics

TLDR

Land mobile satellite channel modeling is essential for analytical and numerical performance prediction of narrowband and wideband systems with various modulations and diversity schemes. The authors propose a new shadowed Rice model for land mobile satellite channels. The model characterizes the line‑of‑sight amplitude with a Nakagami distribution, yielding a shadowed Rice formulation. The model yields closed‑form expressions for key statistics, matches experimental data as well as Loo’s model, and demonstrates flexibility across diverse channel conditions while reducing computational burden.

Abstract

We propose a new shadowed Rice (1948) model for land mobile satellite channels. In this model, the amplitude of the line-of-sight is characterized by the Nakagami distribution. The major advantage of the model is that it leads to closed-form and mathematically-tractable expressions for the fundamental channel statistics such as the envelope probability density function, moment generating function of the instantaneous power, and the level crossing rate. The model is very convenient for analytical and numerical performance prediction of complicated narrowband and wideband land mobile satellite systems, with different types of uncoded/coded modulations, with or without diversity. Comparison of the first- and the second-order statistics of the proposed model with different sets of published channel data demonstrates the flexibility of the new model in characterizing a variety of channel conditions and propagation mechanisms over satellite links. Interestingly, the proposed model provides a similar fit to the experimental data as the well-accepted Loo's (1985) model but with significantly less computational burden.