Measurement-based evaluation of antenna- and time diversity for mobile satellite systems

Signal diversity is used as a common method to improve the service availability in digital satellite communication and broadcasting systems. This paper focuses on the achievable receive antenna- and time diversity gain for land mobile satellite applications in various environments. A measurement van was equipped with four antennas, mounted at the front, back, left and right side of the rooftop. A high-power satellite broadcasting signal within the S-band was recorded along the east coast of the United States. The diversity gain is calculated from the first-order statistics of the measured high-resolution fading signals.