Channel Coding Gain Studies Over Ka Band Satellite Systems at Venezuelan Amazonian Area

Abstract

The signals in Ka band are seriously degraded by various climate phenomena, where the rainfall is the main cause of attenuation at high frequencies. An important portion of the Venezuelan Satellite footprint is dedicated to provide services over the Amazonian area. In the Amazon, the rain attenuation is a significant limitation for satellite communications. In order to keep the satellite services operating in normal conditions, it is important to mitigate the attenuation losses due the heavy rain. An efficient way to compensate the rain attenuation is using coding gain, specifically, channel codes gain combined with the spread spectrum gain from the CDMA system. The basic principle is to generate sufficient gain to compensate the rain attenuation in order to receive the same Carrier to Noise Ratio (C/N0) level, similar to clear sky conditions, even in presence of rain. The research aims at simulating the codes performance and combines its advantages with the CDMA method features against the channel loss. The main purpose, is to receive the same bit error rate of BER=10-6 with lower values of Eb/N0.