Propagation characteristics in land mobile satellite systems

A description is given of experiments on land mobile satellite systems carried out with the Engineering Test Satellite-V (ETS-V) at 1.6 and 1.5 GHz. Typical propagation characteristics observed, a received power distribution measured in a local area, and estimation methods for received signal variations caused by a building and a single tree are described. It is shown that the shadowing effects of a building can be estimated exactly from a knife-edge diffraction model. Single-tree attenuation can be estimated from the relation between the area of the first Fresnel zone and the area that the tree occupies in it. It is concluded that mobile satellite communication services are achievable on about 90% of the main road in the area including local cities in Japan.<<ETX>>