Transmission design of two Mbps digital carriers in a nonlinear satellite channel

How a TAT-8 trans-Atlantic fiberoptic cable carrying multiple T3 digital carriers can be effectively restored via the Intelsat system is described. It is shown that through judicious transmission design, two 44.736-Mb/s T3 digital carriers can be carried in one 72-MHz Intelsat V, VA, or VI satellite transponder, while at the same time delivering ISDN-compatible bit-error-rate performance. It is also shown that with a moderate amount of forward error correction (FEC) coding, the restoration of TAT-8 cable can be effectively handled by an Intelsat standard A earth station, even in the presence of substantial cochannel interference and other significant transmission impairments caused by the nonlinear characteristics of a satellite transponder.<>