A statistical model for land mobile satellite channels and its application to nongeostationary orbit systems

The paper introduces a statistical channel model which is a combination of Rice and lognormal statistics, and is suitable in principle to all types of environment (rural, suburban, urban) simply by tuning the model parameters. The model validity is confirmed by comparisons with measurement data collected in the literature. Empirical formulas are derived for the model parameters to fit measured data over a wide range of elevation angles. In particular, the model is applied to nongeostationary satellite channels, such as low-Earth orbit and medium-Earth orbit channels, in which for a given user located in a generic site the elevation angle changes continuously. Finally, examples of average bit error probability evaluations in the channel are provided