Performance of meteor burst communication using variable data rates

The performance of a meteor-burst (MB) communication system is analyzed. The message to be transmitted consists of a number of packets, and the data rate is varied as a function of the channel state in order to maintain an approximately constant bit error rate (BER). The message is assumed to be repeated an indefinite number of times. The quantity of interest is the probability that the message will be received correctly at least once in a time span of T_D seconds. This analysis is a continuation of a previous analysis (S. Davidovici and E.G. Kanterakis, Performance of a Meteor-Burst Communication System Using Packet Messages with Variable Data Rates, IEEE Trans. Comm., to be published), where the message was assumed to be contained in a single packet. It is shown that considerable improvement can be gained when the message is contained in many packets as opposed to the case when the message consists of a single packet