Adaptive transmission scheme in Ka-band satellite communications

The propagated electromagnetic waves are affected severely by the weather and surrounding environment in the satellite channels, especially for Ka band where the rain attenuation has the most severe impact on the quality of transmission links. In this paper, an adaptive transmission scheme is proposed by comprehensively considering the shadow-Rican fading and rain attenuation, and a new two-state satellite channel model is presented, taking into account the dynamic characteristic of rain attenuation and the influenced degree of shadow-Rican fading. Following this, we estimate the channel state and devise adaptive algorithms suited for the channel sates of rain and clear with average shadowing respectively under simulating, computing and determining. Moreover, the system performances of the proposed scheme are investigated in terms of BER and throughput. Simulation results show that the proposed adaptive transmission scheme can effectively improve the BER and throughput performance.