Radiowave Propagation Effect on Linearization for Earth-Space Satellite Links

Abstract

Over the past decades, earth orbiting Satellites may employ different linearization techniques to cope with the increasing demand of spectral efficiency and data quality. Unlike the free-space transmission on earth, satellite links typically suffer from low signal to noise ratio and atmospheric impairments. This paper provides a framework to investigate the effect of radiowave propagation characteristics on non-linear power amplifiers. In particular, Nakagami-m fading is applied to the real-time amplifier response collected from a radio frequency testbed. The experimental results show that the prediction model in the context of digital pre-distortion correction could be optimized in order to index the atmospheric fade level and to compensate for the nonlinearities arising from the earth-space impairments.