A robust satellite system architecture for the mobile user objective system

The Department of Defense (DoD) is pursuing development of a mobile user objective system (MUOS). This next generation satellite system will provide voice and data services to ground, airborne and shipborne users with special emphasis on serving a large population of handheld subscribers. A major element of the MUOS architecture will likely be a DoD owned and operated satellite system in the current UHF MILSATCOM frequency band. This paper outlines an innovative architecture for a DoD UHF satellite system which provides substantial system wide capacity and reliable service to a wide range of subscriber types, including handhelds. In particular, the system is robust in the face of the severe channel impairments historically encountered in this band. The key attribute of the architecture that enables handling the impairments is path diversity with diversity combining. The overall diversity combining architecture is described and performance estimates are presented.