A New Simple Model for Land Mobile Satellite Channels
A. Abdi, W. C. Lau, M.-S. Alouini, and M. Kaveh
Dept. of Elec. and Comp. Eng., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455
Emails: {abdi, wlau, alouini, kaveh}@ece.umn.edu
Abstract - In this paper we propose a new shadowed Rice model
for land mobile satellite channels. In this model the amplitude of
the line-of-sight is characterized by the Nakagami distribution.
The model provides closed-form mathematically-tractable
expressions for the fundamental channel statistics such as
envelope probability density function and envelope-squared
moment generating function. The model is very convenient for
analytical and numerical performance prediction of complex
narrowband and wideband land mobile satellite systems, with
different types of uncoded/coded modulations, with or without
diversity. Comparison of the new model with published channel
data demonstrates the flexibility of the model in characterizing a
variety of channel conditions and propagation mechanisms.
I. INTRODUCTION
Land mobile satellite (LMS) systems are an important part of the
third and fourth generation of wireless systems. The significance of
such systems is rapidly growing for a variety of applications such as
navigation, communications, broadcast, etc. LMS systems provide
services which are not feasible via land mobile terrestrial (LMT)
systems. As a complement to LMT systems, LMS systems are able
to serve many users over a wide area with low cost. For extensive
surveys on LMS systems and services, we refer the readers to [1] [2]
[3].
The quality of service provided by LMS systems strongly
depends on the propagation channel between satellite and the mobile
user. An accurate model for the LMS channel is required for
calculating fade margins, assessing the performance of modulation
and coding schemes, analyzing the efficiency of communication
protocols, and so on. The unwanted random fluctuations of the
signal envelope in a LMS channel can be attributed to two types of
fading: multipath fading and shadow fading [4]. In an ideal LMS
channel without any types of fading, where there is a clear and clean
line-of-sight (LOS) between satellite and user without any obstacle
in between, the envelope is a nonrandom constant (at a given instant
of time). Due to multipath fading, caused by weak scattered
components propagated via different non-LOS paths, together with
the nonblocked LOS component, the envelope becomes a Rice
random variable. Shadow fading comes from the complete or partial
blockage of the LOS by buildings, trees, hills, mountains, etc.,
which in turn makes the amplitude of the LOS component a random
variable. This gives rise to the shadowed Rice distribution for the
envelope in LMS channels.
Among the proposed models for LMS channels, the shadowed
Rice model proposed originally by Loo [5] has found wide
applications in different frequency bands such as the UHF-band [6],
L-band [6] [7], S-band [8], and Ka-band [6]. In Loo’s model, the
amplitude of the LOS component is assumed to be a lognormal
random variable. However, as discussed in [9], the application of the
lognormal distribution for characterizing shadow fading most often
results in complicated expressions for the key first and second-order
channel statistics such as envelope probability density function
(PDF) and envelope level crossing rate (LCR), respectively.
Mathematical manipulation of those expressions is usually hard, as
they cannot be written in terms of known mathematical functions.
This, in turn, makes data fitting and parameter estimation for the
lognormal-based models a complex and time-consuming task.
Performance analysis of communication systems, e.g., interference
analysis or calculation of the average bit error rate (BER) for single
and multichannel reception, is even much more difficult for the
lognormal-based models, as sometimes even the numerical
procedures for these models fail to give the correct answer.
On the other hand, as is conjectured in [9], application of the
gamma distribution, as an alternative to the lognormal distribution,
can result in simpler statistical models with the same performance
for practical cases of interest. For example, it is shown in [10] that
for LMT channels, the gamma-based K distribution is much simpler
than the lognormal-based Suzuki distribution, with nearly the same
performance. In this paper, we assume the power of the LOS
component is a gamma random variable. According to the simple
relationship between the gamma and Nakagami distributions [11],
this means that we are modeling the amplitude of the LOS
component with the Nakagami distribution. As we will see in the
sequel, a Rice PDF with Nakagami-distributed LOS amplitude
constitutes a versatile model which not only agrees very well with
measured LMS channel data, but also offers significant analytical
and numerical advantages for system performance prediction.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section II the
statistical properties of the model, i.e., PDF, moments, and moment
generating function (MGF) are derived. Section III is devoted to
establishing a connection between the parameters of Loo’s model
and our model. In Section IV, the new model is compared with
measured data. Different types of system performance assessments,
such as outage probability of systems subject to interference and
BER calculation of uncoded/coded modulations with/without
diversity, are discussed in Section V. The paper concludes with a
summary given in Section VI.
II. STRUCTURE AND STATISTICS OF THE NEW MODEL
Using the same notation as [5], the shadowed Rice PDF for the
signal envelope in a LMS channel can be written as
r  r 2 + Z 2   Z r 
pR (r ) = EZ  exp  −  I0   , r ≥ 0 , (1)
 0
b  2b0   b0  
where R is the envelope, EZ [.] is the mathematical expectation with
respect to Z, 2b0 is the total power of multipath components, Z is
the amplitude of the LOS component, and I 0 (.) is the zero-order
modified Bessel function of the first kind. In this paper, we model
the random variable Z with the Nakagami PDF, i.e.
2m m  −m z 2 
pZ ( z ) = z 2 m −1 exp  , z≥0, (2)
Γ(m) Ω m
 Ω 
in which m ≥ 0 is the shape parameter and Ω = E[ Z 2 ] is the scale
parameter. The reader should notice that in the traditional Nakagami
model for multipath fading [11], m has the limited range of m ≥ 0.5 ,
while here we allow m to vary over a wider range, i.e., m ≥ 0 . This
enables the Nakagami PDF to model different types of LOS in a respectively by Eqs. (7) and (8) as
variety of LMS channels [4]. For m = 0 we have pZ ( z ) = δ ( z ) ,
1 Ω  Ψ ′(m) 2
with δ (.) as the Dirac delta function, which corresponds to urban ln E Z t  = ln   + Ψ (m)  t + t
areas with complete obstruction of the LOS. The case of 0 < m < ∞ 2 m  8
(7)
is associated with suburban and rural areas with partial obstruction Ψ′′(m) 3 Ψ′′′(m) 4
of the LOS. For m = ∞ we have pZ ( z ) = δ ( z − Ω ) , which + t + t + ...,
48 384
corresponds to open areas with no obstruction of the LOS. Of course
the abstract cases of m = 0 and m = ∞ cannot be met in practice, d0 2
ln E Z t  = µ t + t , (8)
and in real-world situations we expect nonzero small and finite but 2
large values of m for urban and open areas, respectively. The where Ψ (.), Ψ′(.), Ψ ′′(.), and Ψ′′′(.) are the psi function and its
moderate values of m corresponds to suburban and rural areas. derivatives, respectively [13]. The absolute values of the psi
By calculating the expectation in (1) using [12], and after some function and its derivatives converge to zero very fast, as m
algebraic manipulations, we obtain the new envelope PDF as increases. By second-order matching of the two expressions in (7)
m and (8), the following relationship between the two sets of
 2b0 m  r  r2  parameters (m, Ω) and ( µ , d 0 ) can be established
pR ( r ) =   exp  − 
 0
2b m + Ω  0
b  2b0 
(3) 1 Ω 
 Ω r2  µ= ln   + Ψ (m)  , (9)
× 1 F1  m, 1,  , r ≥ 0, 2 m 
 2b0 (2b0 m + Ω) 
where 1 F1 (.,.,.) is the confluent hypergeometric function [13]. For Ψ′(m)
d0 = . (10)
m=0, Eq. (3) simplifies to the Rayleigh PDF 4
(r b0 )exp(− r 2 2b0 ) , while for m = ∞ it reduces to the Rice PDF For a given d 0 , the corresponding m can be easily obtained by
(r b0 )exp(−(r 2 + Ω) 2b0 ) I 0 ( Ω r b0 ) . In contrast with Loo’s PDF, solving the equation in (10), numerically. The value of Ω can be
which is an infinite-range integral, Eq. (3) has a compact form in calculated by inverting the equation in (9), which yields
terms of the tabulated function 1 F1 (.,.,.) , also available in standard Ω = m exp[2 µ − Ψ (m)] .
mathematical packages such as Mathematica and Maple for both As we will see later, Loo’s distribution and our distribution
numerical and symbolic operations. Using [12], The moments of the closely match, if one computes our parameter set (b0 , m, Ω) from
proposed PDF can be shown to be the Loo’s parameter set (b0 , µ , d 0 ) , using the relations given in
 2b0 m 
m
k  (9) and (10). This is particularly useful when we wish to apply the
E R k  =   (2b0 )k 2 Γ  + 1 new model with unknown parameters to a set of data collected
 2b 0 m + Ω   2  previously, but the measured data is not available for parameter
(4)
k Ω  estimation, or we may not want to go through the time-consuming
× 2 F1  + 1, m, 1,  , k = 0, 1, 2, ...,
 2 2 b 0 m + Ω  procedures of parameter estimation. In these cases, the parameters of
our model can be simply obtained from the estimated Loo’s
where Γ(.) is the gamma function, and 2 F1 (.,.,.,.) is the Gauss
parameters, using (9) and (10).
hypergeometric function [13].
As is shown in [14], the MGF of the instantaneous power, defined
by S = R 2 , plays a key role in calculating the BER and symbol error IV. COMPARISON WITH PUBLISHED MEASUREMENTS
rate (SER) of different modulation schemes over fading channels. In In this section we consider two sets of published Loo’s
our model, the MGF of S, defined by M S (η ) = E[exp(−η S )] , parameters (b0 , µ , d 0 ) [5] [16]. These parameter values are listed
η ≥ 0 , can be found with the help of [12] as in Table I and Table II, respectively, together with the parameters
(2b0 m) m (1 + 2b0η ) m −1 (b0 , m, Ω) of the proposed model, computed using (9) and (10).
M S (η ) = , η≥0. (5) Although the entries for light and heavy shadowing in Table I and
(2b0 m + Ω)(1 + 2b0η ) − Ω 
m
Table II are identical, we have listed Table II completely, as Loo’s
The simple mathematical form of the above MGF in our model parameters, given in the table, have been used in several studies
entails very straightforward performance evaluation procedures even such as [15] [16] [17] [18] [19], for system analysis and
for multichannel reception of complicated modulation/coding performance prediction purposes. As we expect from the theory, m
schemes in LMS systems. On the other hand, the MGF of S in Loo’s values in Table II decrease as the amount of shadowing increases
model can be expressed at most in terms of an infinite-range integral from light to average, and then to heavy. This empirical observation
or a double infinite sum [15]. Since the numerical manipulation of verifies the key role of the Nakagami m parameter in our model,
both representations of the Loo’s MGF is time consuming, several discussed at the beginning of Section II, in modeling different types
approximate expressions are proposed for different cases [15]. of shadow fading conditions.
In Fig. 1 and Fig. 2, we have plotted the envelope complementary
III. CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THE NEW & LOO’S MODEL cumulative distribution functions (CCDFs), ∫r∞ pR ( x ) dx , for Loo’s
PDF and our PDF, given in (3). Interestingly, all of Loo’s curves
In Loo’s model, the LOS amplitude has a lognormal PDF [5]
and our curves are almost indistinguishable and both are close
1  (ln z − µ )2  enough to the measured data, for different cases and channel
pZ ( z ) = exp  − , z≥0. (6) conditions. These empirical results indicate the utility of our model
2π d 0 z  2 d0 
 for LMS channels. Also note the usefulness of the parameter
With t as a positive real number, it is easy to show that for transformation rules given in (9) and (10), which gives almost
Nakagami and lognormal PDFs in (2) and (6) we have E[ Z t ] given perfect match between Loo’s CCDFs and ours.
 As is discussed in [20], a LMS channel model should be
applicable for a wide range of elevation angles, under which the
satellite is observed. One way of incorporating the effect of the
elevation angle in a statistical LMS channel model is to derive
empirical expressions for the parameters of the envelope PDF in
terms of the elevation angle [20]. To demonstrate this procedure for
our model, we have considered the experimental data published in
[21], also used in [20], and have derived the following relationships
by fitting polynomials over the range 20o < θ < 80o
b0 ( ) = −4 7943 × 10 −8 3
+ 5 5784 × 10−6
+ 3.2710 × 10 , −2
m( ) = 6 3739 × 10 −5 3
5 8533 × 10 −4



Ω( ) = 1 4428 × 10 -5 3
− 2 3798 × 10 -3 2
The proposed PDF in (3), in conjunction with the above equations,
compose a hybrid statistical/empirical model. The empirical and the
theoretical CCDFs of the new model are plotted in Fig. 3 for
different elevation angles.
V. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF LMS SYSTEMS
In this section we focus on two types of system performance
evaluation: BER calculation of uncoded and coded modulations with
diversity reception, and interference analysis of LMS systems. In
both cases we clearly observe the utility and flexibility of the
proposed model for performance evaluation purposes.
A. BER of coded and uncoded modulations with diversity
Define the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) per bit of the
l th branch as γ = ( Eb N 0 ) S , where Eb is the energy per bit and
 
N 0 2 is the power spectral density of the additive white Gaussian
noise. As an example of a common diversity combiner, consider a
maximal ratio combiner (MRC) with L independent branches in a
fading channel. With an MRC, the BER of QPSK and OQPSK, two
common modulations in LMS systems [2] [3], is given by [14]
π 2 L
1  1 
∫ ∏ Mγ
Pb =
π  sin 2 θ  dθ , (11)
 

=1

where M γ (η ) = M S (η Eb N 0 ) . Note that the MGF of S in our
 
model, given by (5), is very convenient for the numerical integration
in (11), as the integrand is just a rational function, while the
integrand in (11) for Loo’s model, according to the previous
discussion, is either an L-fold infinite-range integral or a 2L-fold
infinite-range sum. The general scenario of independent branches
with different fading statistics, as considered above, has practical
importance and is not just of theoretical interest. For example, in the
application of spread spectrum techniques such as DS-CDMA to
LMS systems, to increase capacity, fading resistance, security, etc.
[22], the first arriving path of the wideband LMS channel can be
modeled with a shadowed Rice distribution, while the remaining
paths may be modeled by Rayleigh distributions with different
powers [18] [19].
To do some numerical examples with (11), here we consider a
wideband LMS channel with two paths, both distributed according
to the new shadowed Rice PDF in (3). In one case we assume that
the two paths are under light and average shadowings, while in the
second case the two paths are assumed to be under average and
heavy shadowings. Based on (11) and the parameters listed in Table
II for the new model, the BER curves of a two-finger MRC-RAKE
receiver for these two cases are plotted in Fig. 4. As we expect, the
BERs of the first case are smaller because of the less severe
shadowing conditions.
For an MRC with L independent branches, all under the same
shadowing conditions and with the same parameters taken from
Table II, the BER curves are plotted in Fig. 5 according to (11).
Now we consider two types of coding/modulation techniques for
LMS channels: trellis-coded M-ary phase shift keying (MPSK) and
Reed-Solomon (RS)–coded MPSK. According to [15], we need the
MGF of S to calculate the BER upper bounds for these two
important schemes. This again confirms the utility of our new model
2
− 2 1344 × 10−4 with its simple MGF, given in (5), which makes the numerical
computations for LMS channels very simple.
2
− 1 5973 × 10 −1 3 5156,
B. Interference analysis
1 2702 × 10 -1
− 1 4864. The operation of two (or more) satellites with the same frequency


and the simultaneous illumination of an area by two satellites with
clear LOS may be considered as two major sources of interference
in LMS systems [23]. Let S d and Si represent the instantaneous
power of the desired signal and the interfering signal, respectively.
For a given protection ratio ζ , the probability of outage caused by
the interfering signal is given by
Poutage = Pr[ S d < ζ Si ]. (12)
It is reasonable to assume that the desired and interfering signals are
independent. This yields
pS d ( s d )  ∫ pSi ( si ) dsi  dsd ,
∞ ζ
Poutage = 1 − ∫
sd
(13)
0  0 
where based on (3), the PDF of S can be written as
 2b0 m  1
m
 s 
pS ( s ) =   exp  − 
 2b0 m + Ω  2b0
 2b0 
(14)
 Ω s 
× 1 F1  m, 1,  , s ≥ 0.
 2b0 (2b0 m + Ω) 
Numerical calculation of the double integral in (13) is stable and
straightforward, specially with a standard mathematical software
such as Mathematica which has efficient built-in numerical
procedures for 1 F1 (.,.,.) and many other special functions. On the
other hand, upon the application of Loo’s model, (13) becomes a
quadruple integral, which is definitely more difficult to evaluate.
As an example of the numerical evaluation of (13), we consider
four different interference scenarios in a LMS channel with an
interfering satellite. In the first case we assume that both desired and
interfering signals are under light shadowings, while in the second
case the interfering signal is under heavy shadowing. The other two
cases can be defined as well. Using the parameters of the new model
in Table II, the outage probability for these four cases are plotted in
Fig. 6. As expected, the most severe outage corresponds to the case
where the desired and interfering signals are under heavy and light
shadowings, respectively. On the other hand, for the case in which
the desired and interfering signals are under light and heavy
shadowings, respectively, we have the smallest outage probabilities.
For the remaining two cases where the shadowing conditions are the
same for the desired and interfering signals, we observe an
interesting result. For ζ > 1 , the outage for these two cases are
similar, while for ζ < 1 the two curves diverge.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper a new Rice-based model is proposed for land mobile
satellite channels, in which the amplitude of the line-of-sight is
assumed to follow the Nakagami model. We have shown that this [14] M. K. Simon and M.-S. Alouini, Digital Communication over Fading
new model has nice mathematical properties, its first-order statistics Channels: A Unified Approach to Performance Analysis. New York:
Wiley, 2000.
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land mobile satellite systems. Moreover, We have shown that the [16] C. Loo, “Digital transmission through a land mobile satellite channel,”
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collected at different locations and frequency bands. A connection is [17] Y. A, Chau and J. T. Sun, “Diversity with distributed decisions
combining for direct-sequence CDMA in a shadowed Rician-fading
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easily derived from the estimated parameters of Loo’s model, spread spectrum in a shadowed Rician fading land-mobile satellite
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shadowed Rician fading land-mobile satellite channel,” IEEE Trans.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT [23] Y. Karasawa and M. Yasunaga, “Interference evaluation method for
The work of the first, the third, and the fourth authors have been mobile-satellite systems under Nakagami-Rice fading conditions,”
IEICE Trans. Commun., vol. E75-B, pp. 42-49, 1992.
supported in part by the NSF, under the Wireless Initiative Program, [24] A. Abdi, W. C. Lau, M.-S. Alouini, and M. Kaveh, “A new simple
Grant #9979443. The authors appreciate the input provided by Mr. model for land mobile satellite channels: First and second-order
C. Loo at Communications Research Center, Ottawa, ON, Canada, statistics,” submitted to IEEE J. Select. Areas Commun..
with regard to reproducing the empirical curves in Fig. 1.
Table I
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 0
10 10
2 paths, Light and average shadowing
2 paths, Average and heavy shadowing
5
−1
10
Received signal relative to line−of−sight value (dB)

−2
−5 10

Average bit error rate Pb

−10
−3
10

−15

−4
−20 10

−25
−5
10
Measured values, light shadowing
Measured values, heavy shadowing
−30 Measured values, overall results
Loo’s model
The proposed model 10
−6

−35 0 5 10 15 20 25 30
0.01 0.1 0.3 1 2 5 10 25 50 75 90 95 98 99 99.799.9 99.99 Signal−to−noise ratio (SNR) per bit Eb/No [dB]
Percent of time received signal is greater than ordinate

Fig. 1. Complementary cumulative distribution function of the signal Fig. 4. Bit error rate curves of a two-finger MRC-RAKE receiver in a
envelope in a land mobile satellite channel under different shadowing wideband two-path land mobile satellite channel with QPSK and OQPSK
conditions: Measured data [5], Loo’s model [5], and the proposed model. modulations, under different shadowing conditions.

Light shadowing
0
10

b
Average bit error rate P
5
−2 L=1
10
Received signal relative to line−of−sight value (dB)

−4 L=2
10
Light shadowing
−5
L=4 L=3
Average
shadowing Proposed model
−6
10
−10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Signal−to−noise ratio (SNR) per bit Eb/No [dB]

Heavy shadowing
−15 10
0
b
Average bit error rate P

Heavy shadowing −1 L=1

−20 10

L=2
−2
10
−25 L=3
−3
Loo’s model 10
−30 The proposed model L=4
Proposed model
−4
10
0.01 0.1 0.3 1 2 5 10 25 50 75 90 95 98 99 99.7 99.9 99.99 0 5 10 15
Percent of time received signal is greater than ordinate Signal−to−noise ratio (SNR) per bit E /N [dB]
b o

Fig. 2. Complementary cumulative distribution function of the signal Fig. 5. Bit error rate curves of an L-branch MRC receiver in a land
envelope in a land mobile satellite channel under different shadowing mobile satellite channel with QPSK and OQPSK modulations, where all the
conditions: Loo’s model [16] and the proposed model. branches are either under light or heavy shadowing.

Different outage scenarios

0
10

−5
80o
Received signal relative to line−of−sight value (dB)

−10 −1
10
60o
Outage probability

−15

40o

−2
10
−20

30o

−25 Experimental data Int−light,Des−light

The proposed model 20o Int−light,Des−heavy
Int−heavy,Des−heavy
Int−heavy,Des−light
−3
10
−10 −8 −6 −4 −2 0 2 4 6 8 10
75 90 95 98 99 99.7
Desired power to the interference power ratio ζ [dB]
Percent of time received signal is greater than ordinate

Fig. 3. Complementary cumulative distribution function of the signal Fig. 6. Outage probability curves for four different interference scenarios
envelope in a land mobile satellite channel for different elevation angles: in a land mobile satellite system with an interfering satellite (Des. and Int. in
Measured data [21] and the proposed model. the plot stand for the desired and interfering signals, respectively).