Performance analysis of UHF mobile satellite communication system experiencing ionospheric scintillation and terrestrial multipath fading

This paper analyzes a mobile satellite communication system with respect to the BER performance between a geostationary satellite and a moving node. Specifically, we study a scenario where the channel causes ionospheric scintillation-based multipath fading within the UHF frequency band. The scenario considers medium and high ionospheric scintillation indexes for Rural Area (RA) and Hilly Terrain (HT) multipath profiles. A BER performance decrease of more than 2 orders of magnitude for an ionospheric scintillation index of 0.3 occurs when the terrestrial multipath fading is added to ionospheric scintillated signals. This effect can be associated with satellite link loss, such as the one observed during Operation Anaconda at the Battle of Takur Ghar [1] in Afghanistan. Consequently, we propose a channel model that accounts for these effects, composed by two Rician channels connected in series and employs a K-factor equation in terms of the terrain's reflection coefficient.