2011 6th International ICST Conference on Communications and Networking in China (CHINACOM)
Performance Evaluation and Capacity Analysis for
IDMA-based Satellite Communication System
Hongdan Wang 1 , Gongliang Liu1，*, Xin Ge2, and Xingpeng Mao1
1. School of Information Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Weihai 264209, P.R.China;
2. School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, P.R.China;
liugl@hit.edu.cn
Abstract—In order to overcome the shortcomings of the existing
multiple access methods in satellite networks, IDMA technique is
introduced into satellite communication networks in this paper.
IDMA is a multiple access scheme based on CDMA and it
supports multiple users with low multiuser detection complexity
and provides more and better service for users with limited
resources. In the existing literature, the performance of IDMA is
mainly evaluated in AWGN channels, while this paper establishes
a simulation model of IDMA-based satellite communication
system, and then derives the expression of system capacity by
taking the mobile satellite communication channels into
consideration. Analysis and simulation results show that IDMA
method leads to better BER performance and higher capacity
than CDMA method in satellite communication environment,
illustrating a new solution to next-generation satellite
communication systems.
Keywords- Satellite communications; IDMA; channel model;
system capacity
I. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the
use of satellites in the next generation networks (NGN).
Satellite networks, with the characteristics of wide area
coverage, high bandwidth and broadcasting capability, are
particularly suited to sparsely populated areas where they can
be a cost-effective alternative to a wired network[1].Due to the
restricted spectrum resources and onboard capacity, satellite
communication system is a typical bandwidth-limited and
power-limited system. Therefore, it is an important issue to use
the limited communication resource efficiently, while ensuring
the requirements for quality of all kinds of services at the same
time.
Multiple access method provides a technical guarantee for
effective utilization of wireless resources. Currently multiple
access schemes for broadband satellite systems are mainly
based on TDMA, however, TDMA-based transmission scheme
has some drawbacks, which are difficult to overcome. First, it
needs accurate frame synchronization. Second, complex slot
scheduling algorithms are needed, which increases the burden
of on-board switching. Third, the anti-interference performance
of TDMA scheme is unsatisfactory. Code-division
multiple-access (CDMA) scheme can provide greater capacity,
more flexible implementation and many other prominent
advantages, such as the ability of soft hand-off, dynamic
allocation of capacity and facilitation of multiple rate
application[2]. However, due to the limitation of onboard
processing, the tremendous computational cost involved in
CDMA-based multiuser detection (MUD) restricts its
This project is sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (Grant No. 61001093), National Basic Research Program of China (973
Program) (No. 2007CB310606), and Development Program for Outstanding
Young Teachers in Harbin Institute of Technology (HITQNJS. 2008.063). 604
978-1-4577-0101-6/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
application in practical satellite systems.
IDMA technology, put forward by Professor Li Ping of
university of Hong Kong, provides a new solution for multiple
access method in satellite communication systems. As a new
wireless access technology, the key thought of IDMA is to use
different interleavers for distinguishing multiple users. The
information of each user is first encoded using a forward error
correction (FEC) code. And then the coded signal is interleaved
using a unique interleaver before transmission. Different
interleavers are used to separate the signals from different
IDMA users.
Compared to CDMA, IDMA solves the problem of MAI at a
very low computational complexity, and achieves the
near-single-user performance. Thus the capacity of single-cell
IDMA systems is mainly power-limited, unlike
interference-limited CDMA systems.
As a new multiple access, the current research of IDMA
mainly focuses on AWGN channels and the terrestrial mobile
cellular systems. While, the authors believe that IDMA is
particularly suitable for the resource-limited satellite networks
due to the following advantages[3]: (1) Using different
interleavers, different users can transmit their information
simultaneously, and the QoS can be satisfied without
complicated slot management or packet scheduling as in
TDMA or CDMA systems, which reduce the complexity for
onboard queuing and switching; (2) The total bandwidth can be
used for low rate channel encoding in low SINR satellite
conditions, leading to an approximating system performance to
the capacity limit of multiple access channel; (3) The
chip-by-chip (CBC) iterative detection algorithm is adopted to
eliminate the MAI, the per-user computational complexity of
which is independent of the number of users, reducing the
onboard computational burden. In view of this, this paper
introduces IDMA method into satellite communication systems
and analyzes its system performance in details.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In section II,
the model of IDMA-based satellite communication system is
established. And then, performance analysis and comparison
are carried out between IDMA-based satellite communication
system and traditional CDMA-based satellite communication
system in section III. In section IV, taking the multiple access
interference (MAI) into consideration, the expression of system
capacity is derived, and the simulation results are presented.
Finally, conclusions are drawn in section V.
978-1-4577-0101-6/11/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
 II. MODELING OF IDMA-BASED SATELLITE
COMMUNICATION SYSTEM
The wireless channel in mobile satellite communication
system is a typical fading and complex channel, including
multi-path fading, shadowing, Doppler frequency shift and
ionosphere scintillation, etc, which seriously affect the
reliability of signal transmission. So far, there are several
mature models of satellite channels, such as C.Loo, Corazza
and Lutz models, based on different combination of Rayleigh
distribution, Rician distribution and lognormal distribution.
C.Loo and Corazza models are applied to GEO satellites, while
Lutz model is adapted to NGEO satellites. C.Loo model is
merely suitable for rural environment, but Corazza model and
Lutz model are suitable for all mobile satellite environment.
For simplicity, C.Loo model is considered for the wireless
channel in the IDMA-based satellite communication system in
this paper.
Environment of rural area is comparatively expansive and
there is not particularly significant multi-path effect. Therefore,
in C.loo model, the received signal can be divided into two
main parts; one caused by shadow fading represents direct
signal component, and the other denotes pure multi-path signal
component [5]. The shadow fading follows logarithmic normal
distribution and the multi-path fading follows Rician
distribution. By combining them, the C.loo model conforms to
the real transmission environment. Assume that C.Loo channel
model is a memoryless channel, so after the chip-matched
filtering, the received signal r(t) can be written as
r ( t ) = z ( t ) s (t ) + d ( t )
Where z(t) is the direct signal component, s(t) is the shadow
fading, and d(t) is the pure multi-path signal component. By
calculating, the PDF (probability density function) of received
signal amplitude can be written as
r ∞ 1 ⎡ (ln z − μ)2 (r 2 + z2 ) ⎤
fr (r) =
b0 2π d0
∫
0 z
exp ⎢−
⎣ 2d0
−
2b0 ⎦
⎥ I0 (rz / b0 )dz
Where b0 represents the average multi-path power, μ and d0
are the mean and variance of lnz, which can be measured by the
aircraft. Therefore, suppose the signal is transmitted in C.loo
channel model, the IDMA-based satellite communication
system is established as shown in Fig. 1.
d1 c1 x1
π1
dk cK xk
πK
~
d1 π 1−1
π1
~
dk π k−1
πk
Figure 1. The model of IDMA-based satellite communication system
The upper part of Fig. 1 shows the transmitter structure of
the IDMA-based satellite communication system under
consideration with K simultaneous users. The input data
sequence dk of user_k is spread based on a spreading sequence,
generating a sequence ck ≡ [ck (1),..., ck ( j ),..., ck ( L)]T , where L
is the frame length. Then ck is permutated by an interleaver π k ,
producing xk ≡ [ xk (1),..., xk ( j ),..., xk ( L)]T . Following the
CDMA convention, we call the elements in xk “chips”. Users
are solely distinguished by their interleavers, hence the name
interleave-division multiple-access (IDMA).
As for the receiver, a chip-by-chip (CBC) iterative receiver
structure is adopted, as illustrated in Fig. 1, which consists of
an elementary signal estimator (ESE) and K single-user
posteriori probability (APP) decoders (DECs). The multiple
access and coding constraints are considered separately in the
ESE and DECs. The outputs of the ESE and DECs are extrinsic
log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) about {xk(j)}. A global turbo-type
iterative process is applied to process the LLRs generated by
the ESE and DECs [3].
The key principle of IDMA is that the interleaver
{π k } should be different for different users. Assume that the
interleavers are generated independently and randomly.
These interleavers disperse the spread sequences so that the
adjacent chips are approximately uncorrelated, which
facilitates the simple chip-by-chip detection scheme.
III. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
In this part, we focus on the performance analysis of
(1) IDMA-based satellite communication system. The system
performance is shown mainly through simulation.
Let N be the number of information bits in a frame, K the
number of simultaneous users in the system, L the number of
chips, M the length of spreading sequence, It the number of
iteration, respectively. Here L = M * N . Suppose that α is
the elevation of satellite. Eb/N0 is the signal to noise ratio per
(2) bit. The spreading sequence is alternant signs, i.e., [+1,-1,
+1,-1...]. The purpose of spreading sequence is to balance the
numbers of +1 and -1, so as to maximize randomness among
the transmitted sequences. BPSK signaling is always assumed.
Based on system model as shown in Fig. 1, the performance
result is given in Fig. 2 by simulation.
It can be seen from Fig. 2: (1) IDMA is quite suitable in the
satellite communication environment. It can be seen the bit
error rate (BER) can reach a very low level with Eb/N0
increasing (i.e., K=5, Eb/N0=10dB ， BER>10-3). (2) The
simulation results are quite close for different K. The
performance of multi-users nearly approaches the single user
performance.
Given the same parameters, Fig. 2 also compares the
traditional CDMA-based satellite system and IDMA-based
satellite system with different K. It can be seen when K is same
and Eb/N0 is at a high level, CDMA scheme has higher BER
than IDMA, besides the two methods become apparent when K
is increasing(i.e., K=15).
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 10
0 leading role and shadow fading and multi-path effect become
abate. Given the same parameters, Fig. 4 compares the
performance of the traditional CDMA-based communication
10
-1 system and IDMA-based system with different satellite
elevation. It is shown that the performance becomes better with
the increase of elevation both in IDMA and CDMA schemes.
IDMA K=1
When the elevation is the same, IDMA has lower BER than
BER

-2
10 IDMA K=5
IDMA K=15 CDMA; these results also prove that IDMA has a better
performance of anti-interference. For example, when α is
CDMA K=15
CDMA K=5

10
-3 CDMA K=1
increased to 400, Eb/N0 equals 10dB, the IDMA-based system
supports at a BER below 10-2 while the BER of traditional
CDMA-based system is much higher than 10-2.
-4
10
-10 -5 0 5 10
Eb/No /dB 0
10

Figure 2. Comparison between IDMA and CDMA in satellite channel.

N=100, M=30, It=3, α =40°
-1
10

It’s known that the current research for IDMA only focuses -2
on AWGN channels. Fig. 3 compares the traditional 10
idma =20°
CDMA-based satellite system and IDMA-based in AWGN

BER
idma =30°
idma =40°
channels. As shown in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3, the performance -3
10
idma
idma
=50°
=60°
advantage of IDMA increases with the number of users both in idma =70°
idma =80°
satellite channels and AWGN channels. These observations can cdma =20°
cdma =30°
be explained intuitively as follows. The main difference -4
10 cdma =40°
between IDMA and CDMA is the chip-level interleaving for cdma
cdma
=50°
=60°
the former and bit-level interleaving for the latter. In satellite cdma
cdma
=70°
=80°
channels, there are multiple paths where adjacent chips from
-5
10
-10 -5 0 5 10
each user interfere with each other. In addition some adjacent Eb/No /dB
chips are the same and correlated. In CDMA, this correlation is
not correct since the same chips are transmitted consecutively, Figure 4. Performance comparisons between IDMA-based satellite
so the adjacent chips are heavily correlated. However, in communication and traditional CDMA-based communication system with
IDMA after random chip-level interleaving, the replicas are different satellite elevation. K=15, N=100, M=30, It=3
dispersed randomly, so the corresponding chips become less
correlated. IV. CAPACITY ANALYSIS
In this section, capacity analysis results are presented to
0
10 demonstrate the capacity of IDMA-based communication
IDMA K= 5
IDMA K= 15 system.
CDMA K= 5
-1
10 CDMA K= 15 Capacity can be defined as the number of traffic channels
which a satellite can simultaneously support for given data rate
-2
10
and bit error rate. Therefore, in order to judge the IDMA and
CDMA multiple access schemes in satellite communication,
BER

we can compare the system capacity of the two different

multiple access schemes based on the same satellite bandwidth.
-3
10

Fig. 5 gives the interference model of given satellite.

Suppose that there are J beams, Nc sub-bands per beam, and Lc
-4
10

traffic channels per sub-band in a given satellite system.

First the Lc is analyzed under the assumption of perfect
-5
10
-10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10
Eb/No /dB
power control. Assume that the system noise power is PN,
signal power is PS, and then the SINR (ratio of signal to
Figure 3. Comparison between IDMA and CDMA in AWGN channel. interference and noise) in a sub-band can be defined as follows:
N=100, M=30, It=3
PS
SINR = (3)
We now extend our discussion to the factor of different ( Lc − 1) PS + PN
satellite elevation. It is known that the influence of the
interference can be reduced by increasing the elevation of
satellite. The reason is that with the increase of satellite
elevation, the direct component of signal gradually plays a

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 aid of this SINR evolution technique developed from the
IDMA systems, the following expressions can be derived for
IDMA-based satellite communication system:

1 Eb R
SINR = ≥( ) req . b
E R I0 B (8)
( Lc − 1). f ( γ ) + ( b . b ) −1
N0 B

Where f (γ) is the iterative factor of power control

depending on SINR evolution.

So similarly, Lc of IDMA-based satellite communication

system can be calculated from equation (8). However since
IDMA scheme is the first time to be applied into satellite
E
communication, the setting of ( I b ) req has no certain standards.
Figure 5. Interference model of given satellite 0

Moreover the BER criterion and the threshold of SINR are

In order to guarantee certain transmission quality, it needs equivalent for a given system. For users, BER criterion is
to set a threshold SINR, whose value depends on transmission more intuitional and it can be set different values meeting the
environment and coding scheme, etc. Assuming Eb / I 0 is the needs of different kinds of business. So combining the upper
E theory and equations, BER criterion is adopted in this paper to
SINR per bit and ( I b ) req denotes the threshold of SINR, so simulation Lc. Conversely, once Lc has been calculated, the
0

the following order should be fulfilled. threshold of SINR can be estimated from equation (6).

PS E R Suppose that Eb/N0 is 8dB, the length of spreading sequence

SIN R = ≥ ( b ) req . b (4)
( L c − 1) PS + PN I0 B M is 30, the number of iteration It is 3, satellite elevation α
is 400, (BER)req is the threshold of BER. Fig. 6 illustrates BER
Where Rb is the channel bit rate, B is the system bandwidth. versus the number of users of IDMA-based communication
It is known that: system and traditional CDMA-based system under BPSK
signaling. It can be distinctly seen that the sub-band of
PS E R
= b. b (5) IDMA-based satellite communication can support more users
PN N 0 B than CDMA-based system with the same parameters. For
example, when (BER)req equals 10-2, the number of users of
Where Eb/N0 is the signal to noise ratio per bit, so it can be
derived from equations (4) and (5) as: IDMA-based sub-band Lc is 20, while the number of users of
E
CDMA Lc is 8. In the meanwhile, the relevant ( I b ) req is 4dB
1 E R 0
SINR = ≥ ( b ) req . b
Eb Rb −1 I0 B (6) based on equation (6). It can be seen the sub-band capacity of
( Lc − 1) + ( . )
N0 B IDMA is nearly double above CDMA’s.

Therefore for an ordinary system, given the values of the -1

10
threshold of SINR, B, Rb and Eb/N0, Lc can be calculated. IDMA
CDMA
However IDMA technology involves SINR evolution
technique which can obviously improve the system capacity
because of iteration. From literature [3], it can be concluded:
BER

-2
| hk |2 10
SINRk _ new =
∑| h
k ≠k '
k |2 f (SINRk _ old ) + PN (7)

Where hk is the channel coefficient of user-k, SINRk _ new

and SINRk _ old are SINR-k values after and before iteration -3
10
0 5 10 15 20 25
of CBC (chip-by-chip) algorithm, respectively. The f(SINR) the number of users

decreases with the increase of SINR and its value is lower than
1, which has been verified in literature [3]. Therefore with the Figure 6. BER versus the number of users

607
 Next the capacity of the whole system is analyzed. It is
known that a LEO satellite can provide 16 beams J and a beam
can provide 13 sub-bands Nc. The above section has calculated
the traffic channels Lc, so the whole system capacity C can be
estimated as following:
satellite communication system, which leads a large extent to
the complexity and performance of the systems. In this paper,
the IDMA scheme is introduced into satellite communication
system to overcome the shortcomings of the existing multiple
access methods in satellite networks.

C = J * N C * LC (9) The BER and capacity with IDMA-based system under the
assumption of perfect power control is analyzed. It is found
that the level of multiple access interference has a serious
Table 1 gives the different capacity C between IDMA and
impact on system performance and IDMA solves the problem
CDMA when α equals 500, M (the length of spreading
of MAI at very low computational complexity. It is also shown
sequence) equals 30. In Table 1 Cap_IDMA presents system
that the system performance can be improved with the increase
capacity of IDMA-based satellite communication, Cap_CDMA
of satellite elevation.
presents system capacity of traditional CDMA-based satellite
communication, ‘--’ means capacity is null. In comparison with CDMA-based system, it can be seen that
the performance of IDMA is superior to CDMA in satellite
TABLE 1. CAPACITY COMPARISON BETWEEN IDMA AND CDMA communication system, and IDMA has larger system capacity.
Moreover, the CBC iterative algorithm of IDMA has low
(BER)req=10-2 (BER)req=10-3 complexity, which simplifies the on-board processing. This
Eb/N0 ((Eb/I0)req=3.5dB) ((Eb/I0)req=5.5dB) paper also provides a valuable reference solution for the next
Cap_IDMA Cap_CDMA Cap_IDMA Cap_CDMA generation satellite communication system with larger capacity,
5dB -- -- -- -- more business, and higher speed of traffic.
6 dB 2634 985 -- -- REFERENCES
7 dB 4997 2542 -- --
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V. CONCLUSIONS
The multiple access method is an important element of

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