Cooperative Communication Protocols for Performance Improvement in Mobile Satellite Systems

[Abstract] A mobile satellite indoor signal is proposed to model performance of cooperative communication protocols and maximal ratio combining. Cooperative diversity can improve the reliability of satellite system and increase data speed or expand cell radius by lessening the effects of fading. Performance is determined by measured bit error rates (BERs) in different types of cooperative protocols and indoor systems (e.g. GSM and WCDMA networks). The effect of performance on cooperative terminals located at different distances from an indoor cellular system is also discussed. The proposed schemes provide higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)—around 1.6 dB and 2.6 dB gap at BER [10-2 ]for amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) cooperative protocols, respectively, when the cooperative terminal is located 10 m from the WCDMA indoor system. Cooperative protocols improve effective power utilization and, hence, improve performance and cell coverage of the mobile satellite network.

[Keywords] cooperative communication; amplify-and-forward; mobile satellite system; signal-to-noise ratio; maximal ratio combining