Performance of land mobile satellite communication (LMSC) channel with hybrid FEC/ARQ

In this paper, we use Lutz's (1991) model to investigate BER (bit error rate)/PER (packet error rate) performance of the LMSC channel with various FEC (forward error correction) coding as a function of different channel parameters. The problem of insufficient interleaving is studied. Next, hybrid FEC/ARQ techniques are evaluated for different (i.e. open, and rural) channels. We focus on the problem of joint optimization of system parameters, such as maximum retransmission number, and coding rate. Simulation results show that hybrid ARQ with proper parameters guarantees high TCP end-to-end throughput performance, and is a promising approach for high-speed satellite communications in the future.