Turbo coded software radio performance over a UHF satellite channel

The end-to-end performance of a turbo-coded waveform is measured on a MIL-STD-188-181 UHF satellite communications channel. The waveform implements a coherent BPSK modulation with a rate 1/2 turbo code on a software radio test-bed. All baseband transmitter and receiver functions are performed by software modules hosted on commercial hardware, specifically programmable digital signal processors and a general purpose microprocessor. The software radio interfaces with standard UHF satellite communications transceivers at their 70 MHz intermediate frequency. Bit error rate performance is measured and compared with laboratory hardware loop-back tests and Monte Carlo simulations.