OPTIMAL SIGNALING FOR METEOR BURST CHANNELS

We examine the design of modulation systems for meteor burst communica tions, In particular, we present a technique which allows the designer to determine the signal set size and the signaling rate which maximiz e the throughput per meteor burst, The technique, which involves the c apacity and cutoff rate from information theory, is applied to a varia ble coding rate scheme and a variable signaling rate scheme, for both coherent MPSK (M = 2, 4, 8) and noncoherent MFSK (M = 2, 4, 8, 16, 32) , As a fringe benefit, the method proposed also provides estimates on achievable throughputs.