Improvements of Signal Gain for MEASAT-2 and MEASAT-3 using Orbital Diversity under Rain Attenuation: A Simulation Approach.

The effect of rain attenuation becomes significant for satellites operating at 10 GHz and above. This has become a matter of concern, especially in tropical regions where relatively heavy rainfall occurs throughout the year. Orbital diversity (OD) is seen to be a viable method to mitigate rain attenuation. It employs multiple satellites transmitting identical signal streams toward a mutual ground station. Although OD has been studied with great interest in regions such as Europe, there is little information of OD research in tropical regions, particularly in Malaysia. Therefore, this paper proposed an analytical approach towards the study of OD in Malaysian climate using MEASAT satellites. The performance of OD is dependent upon the operating frequency and the satellite’s elevation angle. From the simulation, the rain attenuation increases exponentially with the increasing frequency. Therefore, the signal gain decreases in inverse exponential manner. The simulation also shows that MEASAT-3, having an elevation angle of 77.695°, experiences higher signal attenuation than MEASAT-2 (elevation angle 34.324°). Using signal combination, an OD signal experiences signal boost of up to 2.3 times the individual signal gain. With this significant finding, the OD is proposed to mitigate rain attenuation in Malaysia

Improving the evaluation performance of space-time trellis code through STTC visualisation tool

In this paper we present a new visualisation approach in the effort of improving the evaluation strategy of space-time trellis code (STTC) generator matrix G. To our knowledge, although visualisation is widely used to handle a variety of problems, it has never been employed specifically to solve complexity problems that are related to generator matrix G evaluation. Most approaches are either mathematically or algorithmically inclined. As such, they tend to offer a series of refinement that enhances the current available method, but do not provide fresh insight on the problem at hand. By comparing it with the enhancement strategy that was discovered via the normal approach (i.e., by analysing algorithm) it was discovered that visualisation had inspired an entirely different pruning technique that outperformed the common approach by 20%

On the robustness of measurement of reliability stopping criterion in turbo iterative decoding

Measurement of reliability (MOR) stopping criterion is able to terminate early in the low and high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) while maintaining the bit error rate (BER) performance. However, the performance of MOR is only based on one code structure and hence, the robustness of MOR is still unknown in turbo iterative decoding. Thus, this paper will test the robustness of MOR based on the following parameters: frame size, code structure, channel reliability and code rate. Then, we analyse and compare the average iteration number (AIN) and the BER performance of MOR with the benchmark stopping criterion known as Genie to determine the robustness of MOR. From the analysis, MOR has a BER degradation for low code rate. MOR also fails to perform well if the corret channel reliability is not available at the receiver and this results a large degradation in BER performance. However, MOR has close performance to Genie in terms of BER for various frame sizes, code structures and high code rate with the assistance of correct channel reliability. MOR is also able to save AIN at low SNR as compared to Genie and this can reduce delay and complexity of turbo codes

Optimal generator matrix G

Multiple antenna transmission methods are currently being developed all around the world for evolving 3G wireless standards. Space–Time Trellis Code (STTC) has been proven to use transmit diversity efficiently. It effectively exploits the effects of multipath fading to increase the information capacity of the multiple antenna transmission systems. STTC is a channel coding technique that maximises the ‘distance’ between different symbol matrices such that the probability of transmission errors are decreased when transmitting redundant symbol or in other words, to maximise the minimum determinant. Maximising the minimum determinant is equivalent to obtaining optimal generator matrix G. Instead of using state diagrams, optimal generator matrix G discussed in this paper is obtained using an improved algorithm which is based on Lisya tree structure. Optimal generator matrix G in this paper has a minimum determinant of 48 which is the highest coding gain obtained so far

Performance analysis of stopping turbo decoder iteration criteria

The invention of turbo codes has attracted many researchers to explore various fields regarding turbo codes since it provides better error rate performance compared to the existing codes. Good error rate performance gives a penalty to the complexity of the codes. It includes the complexity of decoding algorithm and iterative decoding. This paper reviews the history of turbo codes and its structures. This paper also discusses the turbo decoding stopping criteria algorithm and analyses the performance of fixed and cross-entropy (CE) based stopping criteria. From the results, both criteria fail to terminate early in low SNR. However, CE-based stopping criteria outperform the fixed stopping criterion at high SNR and able to save more iteration and delay. This leads to an energy saving preservation while maintaining the performance of turbo codes

Threshold-based bit error rate for stopping iterative turbo decoding in a varying SNR environment

Online bit error rate (BER) estimation (OBE) has been used as a stopping iterative turbo decoding criterion. However, the stopping criteria only work at high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), and fail to have early termination at low SNRs, which contributes to an additional iteration number and an increase in computational complexity. The failure of the stopping criteria is caused by the unsuitable BER threshold, which is obtained by estimating the expected BER performance at high SNRs, and this threshold does not indicate the correct termination according to convergence and non-convergence outputs (CNCO). Hence, in this paper, the threshold computation based on the BER of CNCO is proposed for an OBE stopping criterion (OBEsc). From the results, OBEsc is capable of terminating early in a varying SNR environment. The optimum number of iterations achieved by the OBEsc allows huge savings in decoding iteration number and decreasing the delay of turbo iterative decoding

Power consumption optimization technique in ACS for space time trellis code viterbi decoder

To provide fast digital communications systems, energy efficient, high-performance, low power is critical for decoding mobile receiver device. This paper proposes a low power optimization techniques in the Add Compare Select (ACS) unit for Space Time trellis codes (STTC) Viterbi decoder. STTC Viterbi decoder is used as a reference case. This paper discusses about how to lower the power in the ACS architecture, to optimize the Viterbi decoder STTC in reducing the total power consumption. Based on the results of design and analysis, power consumption Viterbi decoder modeling, low power system for STTC Viterbi decoder is proposed. Design and optimization of ACS unit in STTC Viterbi decoding is done using Verilog HDL language. Power analysis tools in the software Altera Quartus 2 is used for the synthesis of total system power consumption. Optimization strategy showed an increase of 83% power reduction compared to previous studies

Impact of increasing threshold level on higher bit rate in free space optical communications

The biggest challenge facing free space optical deployment is optical signal propagation in different atmospheric conditions such as fog, low clouds, rain, snow, dust, haze and various combinations of each. A transmission and detection technique for free space optical communications is proposed where it employs two beams, one modulated with the data, the other with the inverted version of the same data. A differential detection technique is used at the receiver whereby the inverted data are used as the reference to perform the decision making, as opposed to the fixed threshold used in the conventional technique. The probability of error under threshold instability in the proposed differential technique and Intensity Modulation/Direct Detection (IM/DD) technique are compared. A simulation under heavy rainfall condition of 8.33×10−4 cm/sec at bit rate of 155 Mbps to 10 Gbps with 0 dBm of launch power and 1.5 km distance shows that this technique achieves an improvement compared to the conventional IM/DD. The differential detection can support a higher bit rate (up to 9 Gbps) because of its noise reduction capabilities due to higher threshold level implemented in the receiver. The IM/DD in contrast, can support bit rates of only 2.5 Gbps. This analysis focuses on weather conditions in Malaysia

Improving the evaluation of generator matrix G by initial upper bound estimation

Space-Time Trellis Code (STTC) can achieve both the diversity and coding gains. To maximize the advantages of STTC, two design criteria for slow Rayleigh fading channels will be used: i.e. the rank and determinant criteria. This paper focuses on the determinant criteria, which involves the evaluation of the generator matrix G. Evaluation is improved by pruning the search process earlier, which is made possible by estimating the initial upper bound prior to the search. In order to reduce the search complexity, the initial upper bound will be calculated at the minimal cycle. Comparatively, it can reduce the search space by 25.8%