Empirical study on mobile satellite link using portable GPS receiver

摘要

In order to give a high quality mobile satellite (MS) services, it is of vital importance to tackle the issue of signal degradation due to factors such as multipath fading and shadowing effect. The advancement of the Global Positioning System (GPS) technology nowadays allows the commercially available, portable GPS receivers to be manipulated in the study of the MS link quality evaluation system. Apart from being low in cost, these receivers are simple to manage which will greatly reduce the time and cost of doing research. In this paper, the measurement methodology utilizing a portable GPS receiver used to extract important MS propagation parameters is explained and discussed. It describes in detail how the experiment was set up and how the measurement was conducted. We presented results obtained from the empirical data and made comparison between various MS environmental conditions that show the feasibility of using GPS in this research. The outcome of this research work will be used as part of a MS link evaluation system going to be developed based on raw propagation data obtained from portable the GPS receivers.