EFFICIENT COMMUNICATIONS USING THE METEOR-BURST CHANNEL

The meteor-burst communications channel offers a largely untapped mean s of communications that can alleviate congestion in many existing com munications . systems. It also provides some interesting advantages ov er other beyond-line-of-sight systems, including lower susceptibility to atmospheric perturbations, a limited footprint, and relatively low cost. Past system applications have been quite limited, however, due t o the random nature of the meteor-burst phenomenon which has resulted in relatively low throughput and lengthy wait-times. This paper presen ts the results of a theoretical study of the meteor-burst channel whic h illustrates its time-varying bursty nature. In addition, the authors describe an innovative approach to data transmission over meteor-burs t systems, i.e., the use of the feedback adaptive variable rate (FAVR) system which allows the maximum amount of information to be transmitt ed over each meteor-burst channel. For underdense meteor channels the FAVR performance is compared to an optimum, system, i.e., a system cap able of changing its bit rate instantaneously to channel conditions so as to maintain a constant SNR in each bit, and to a constant optimum rate/burst system. It is shown that when compared to an optimum rate p er burst system, FAVR can result in a throughput increase exceeding a factor of 10. It is also shown that FAVR can approach the optimum syst em performance, although for practical purposes, it appears that 83-88 % of optimum is attainable.