Analysis of transmission schemes for satellite digital audio broadcasting

The European Space Agency (ESA) is studying different transmission techniques suited for satellite sound broadcasting services. The authors report preliminary results about the performance of two efficient transmission techniques, namely coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing and coded quasi-orthogonal code division multiplexing. By means of a computer simulation approach, the performance of the two systems has been evaluated over the nonlinear satellite fading channel. Link budgets have been established for the case of highly elliptical orbit (HEO) and geostationary orbit (GEO) satellites. Results show that both approaches are suited for satellite radio broadcasting presenting similar impairments over the nonlinear satellite fading channel