Performance of coding and synchronization schemes for a DVB-S based air-interface in the railway environment

Among the different classes of mobile users, public transportation and especially fast trains represent an extremely interesting market, also taking into account that the spatial limitations and the aesthetic constraints are less strict than for the private car market. On the other hand, the railroad environment features some peculiar fading events that have to be carefully taken into account in the system design phase. In this context, the FIFTH (fast Internet for fast train hosts) project, co-funded by the European Commission, has the main goal of providing satellite based communication services to passengers traveling onboard high speed trains, namely digital TV and Internet access (Conforto, P. et al., Proc. 9th Ka and Broadband Commun. Conf., 2003).