Results of L-band satellite experiments for personal communications systems

Hand-held personal communications systems will be power limited and restricted to small operating margins. Limited blockage and multipath experiments have been used to develop preliminary fade margins and performance specifications but these have so far ignored effects induced by the satellite. The results reported indicate that diurnal motion of the satellite, or its corollary movement of the antenna can cause signal variations in excess of 9 dB peak-to-peak for low gain antennas. A preliminary finding is that close-in multipath effects are the cause.