| Abstract: | Orbital diversity is considered to be an effective technique to overcome large fade margins in satellite communication links. This paper discusses triple‐orbital diversity, which uses three satellites and an Earth receiving site. A method for calculating the outage probability of a triple‐orbital diversity protection scheme is proposed. It is based on a model for convective raincells and the lognormal assumption for point rainfall rate statistics. Numerical results are compared with an available set of experimental data taken from a VSAT Earth‐station located in Japan. The agreement was found to be quite encouraging. Some useful conclusions, concerning the relative advantage of using triple‐ against the double‐orbital diversity scheme are also deduced. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
