A generalized N-state model to characterize satellite diversity for arbitrary number of satellites in case of uncorrelated channels

To mitigate the main impairments due to the mobile satellite channel, satellite systems adopting code-division multiple access (CDMA) can exploit diversity. Each signal can flow through more than one path, increasing link availability or improving signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). This letter presents a general mobile satellite channel model for an arbitrary diversity order assuming that all the links are statistically independent. A diversity availability improvement upper bound is calculated.