Performance of Micro-Scale Transmission & Reception Diversity Schemes in High Throughput Satellite Communication Networks

The use of Ka and Q/V bands could be a promising solution in order to accommodate higher data rate, interactive services; however, at these frequency bands signal attenuation due to the various atmospheric phenomena and more particularly due to rain could constitute a serious limiting factor in system performance and availability. To alleviate this possible barrier, short- and large-scale diversity schemes have been proposed and examined in the past; in this paper a micro-scale site diversity system is evaluated in terms of capacity gain using rain attenuation time series generated using the Synthetic Storm Technique (SST). Input to the SST was 4 years of experimental rainfall data from two stations with a separation distance of 386 m at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) campus in Athens, Greece. Additionally, a novel multi-dimensional synthesizer based on Gaussian Copulas parameterized for the case of multiple-site micro-scale diversity systems is presented and evaluated. In all examined scenarios a significant capacity gain can be observed, thus proving that micro-scale site diversity systems could be a viable choice for enterprise users to increase the achievable data rates and improve the availability of their links.