Channel Characterization and Performance Evaluation of Mobile Communication Employing Stratospheric Platforms

ISKANDAR
Shigeru SHIMAMOTO

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E89-B    No.3    pp.937-944
Publication Date: 2006/03/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1345
DOI: 10.1093/ietcom/e89-b.3.937
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: Integrated Systems for Communications
Keyword: 
stratospheric platform,  mobile communication,  channel characterization,  elevation angle,  K factor,  

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Summary: 
Stratospheric platforms have been recently proposed as a new wireless infrastructure for realizing the next generation of communication systems. To provide high quality services, an investigation of the wireless stratospheric platform channel is essential. This paper proposes a definition and describes an analysis of the wireless channel for the link between stratospheric platforms and terrestrial mobile users based on an experiment in a semi-urban environment. Narrowband channel characteristics are presented in terms of Ricean factor (K factor) and local mean received power over a wide range of elevation angles ranging from 10to 90. Finally, we evaluated average bit error probability based on the proposed channel model to examine the channel performance. For the environment in which the measurements were conducted, we find that elevation angles greater than 40yield better performance.