Adaptive communications over fading satellite channels

Effectiveness of prediction and adaptation of fading satellite channels induced by bad weather conditions is presented in terms of power consumption and channel capacity improvement. We suggest adaptive schemes that vary transmission rate, code rate, transmission power or all of these, incorporated with prediction functions for channel states. For prediction, we develop simple linear predictors for received signal attenuation using autoregressive (AR) models. For adaptation, we introduce a continuous power control and discrete rate control strategy. The quantitative analyses of excess average power and channel capacity indicate that the adaptive schemes can achieve substantial performance gains.