Outage probability analysis of the Protected Tactical Waveform (PTW) on the return link

This paper analyzes the outage probability of a multicarrier signal, using the Protected Tactical Waveform (PTW) on the return link (RL). The signal is relayed over a nonlinear distorted satellite transponder. The transponder is modelled to include a gain element, a soft limiter, and a travelling wave tube amplifier (TWTA); a Shaleh model is used to model the TWTA. The outage probability is determined when the probability of the mutual information random variable is less than the code rate. The outage probability is used as a theoretical bound for maximum capacity. This bound serves as an important benchmark of the achievable rate for the RL. The degree in which M-ary phased shift keying (MPSK) signals using Digital Video Broadcasting - Satellite - Second generation (DVB-S2) forward error correction (FEC) with numerous code rates to achieve this bound is investigated by computer simulation, and also discussed in the paper.