Multipath fading analysis of telemetry signals power fluctuations from Universitetsky microsatellite

The article deals with the results of the fading fluctuations analysis for telemetry signals in the 2 m and 70 cm bands from the first Moscow State University microsatellite better known as “Universitetsky”. Radio telemetry signals were received from the microsatellite for around 2 years, collecting and recording the power signal data of almost 7500 satellite overpasses. The received signals from about 2300 satellite overpasses had a very low signal to noise ratio (SNR) that caused high transmission losses. The rest of the signals had a SNR high enough to complete the transmission without losses. The main objective of this paper was to find the fading fluctuations caused both by diffusion and by the presence of Gaussian and non Gaussian noise in telemetry signal power data. The purpose was both to characterize the communication channel as well as to elaborate solutions both to improve the communication quality as well as to identify no homogeneous zones in the ionosphere environment. The signal power analysis was based in the observation of statistical characteristics from different power signal components, in particular the components influenced by diffusion and non Gaussian noise. The employed methodology follows the next steps: removing the power signal envelope; taking away the Gaussian noise; obtaining the statistical characteristics from non Gaussian noise, Gaussian noise and envelope; finally identifying the LOS and NLOS signal fading components. For this purpose, the wavelet technique was used to perform the signal decomposition. In particular, the discrete wavelet transform DWT was utilized to carry out the signal de-noising. Then, the results were statistically treated in order to obtain a diffusion index for Rician fading, which are associated with fading in atmosphere and ionosphere layers. In this way the communications channel among satellite and ground station was characterized and a BER parameter was obtained for every satellite overpass, which means an outstanding result when considering that just few papers describe such results for satellite systems. The obtained results are valid not only for satellite communications systems but also for wireless communications systems. These results are the basis for future communications system design, which in our case pursues to reduce the BER parameter in the satellite link. The referred system will employ adaptive error coding schemes as well as channel analyzer algorithms based in the theory exposed in this paper.