Performance study for a DS/CDMA-based LEO satellite system-equatorial constellation

Various performance studies have been done on CDMA-based LEO satellite network. However, most of these researches focus on satellite constellation with polar orbit due to its attractive commercial interest. Today, in view of the rapid growth in equatorial countries especially south east Asia (SEA), there is an urge to divert attention to this region. In this paper, the performance studies of the CDMA-based equatorial LEO satellite system are done on a downlink. The equatorial satellite constellation is based on the MERLION project, which is a joint satellite program of Nanyang Technological University and the University of Surrey. Henceforth, the effects of variation in elevation angles to the system performance is investigated based on the satellite constellation designed in the presence of multipath diversity and multisatellite diversity. The performance is reflected by the bit error rate of the various scenarios.