On the effect of echoes in hybrid terrestrial-satellite single frequency networks: Analysis and countermeasures

Hybrid terrestrial-satellite Single Frequency Networks (SFN) achieve large spectral efficiencies due to a higher frequency reuse, which is attained by transmitting the same waveform in the same frequency band from satellite and terrestrial transmitters. However, the presence of multiple transmitters propitiates the existence of the so-called SFN echoes, which can degrade the system performance even if they arrive within the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) guard interval. In this paper we characterize this effect by resorting to Packet Error Rate (PER) prediction metrics (or effective Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) metrics), and analyze two simple preprocessing schemes that mitigate this degradation: the use of Alamouti space-time codes, and a convenient pre-filtering at the terrestrial transmitter.