The effect of ionospheric scintillation on VHF/UHF satellite communications

摘要

Periods of intense ionospheric scintillations were analyzed in order to provide information for the design and evaluation of the performance of satellite communication links. Scintillation data were available for the auroral and equatorial regions. The amplitude fluctuations are described by cumulative amplitude distributions and show good agreement with the Nakagami m-distribution. A Rayleigh distribution appears to describe the ‘worst’ case scintillations in the 225–400 MHz band. The rate of scintillations is described by level crossing techniques, power spectra, and correlation functions. The effectiveness of diversity techniques is indicated. The spectral index was measured as approximately f indicating that intense scintillations can become almost frequency-independent in the strong scattering limit.