Simulation of phase nonlinearity effects in a satellite channel

Abstract

This simple channel simulation program is written using MATLAB to determine the influence of phase nonlinearity distortions on the bit error rate performance of BPSK signals transmitted through a satellite transponder and its ground station receiver. For simplicity, the channel is modelled as a cascade of two filters found in the IF section of the satellite transponder and ground station receiver. Coherent (synchronous) detection of the BPSK signal in the ground station receiver is assumed and the binary data is recovered using a sampling and threshold decision device. This simulation method has been applied to the UoSAT-12's Merlion bent-pipe transponder designed for 1 Mb/s BPSK data transmissions.