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Handbook of Propagation Effects for Vehicular and ... - Courses

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Chapter 9<br />

Maritime-Mobile Satellite <strong>Propagation</strong><br />

<strong>Effects</strong><br />

9.1 Introduction<br />

Problems that may affect maritime-mobile satellite communications are<br />

• blockage from ship-structures along the Earth-satellite path,<br />

• multipath from ship structures<br />

• multipath from the ocean at low grazing angles when low-gain antennas are used<br />

• fading due to ionospheric or tropospheric scintillations at low elevation angles<br />

• Faraday rotation effects<br />

• tropospheric refractive effects at low elevation angles such as ducting.<br />

This chapter deals primarily with multipath fading from the ocean when low gain<br />

antennas are employed at low elevation angles <strong>for</strong> ship-satellite scenarios. The other<br />

effects enumerated above are either beyond the scope <strong>of</strong> this text or are described<br />

elsewhere.<br />

9.2 Early Multipath Experiments<br />

9.2.1 Ship to Satellite Fading Measurements<br />

Early measurements <strong>of</strong> multipath effects at 1.5 GHz <strong>for</strong> ship to satellite communications<br />

scenarios were reported by Fang et al. [1982a, b]. The measurements were executed with<br />

a terminal on a ship transmitting to <strong>and</strong> receiving from the MARISAT F-1 satellite<br />

located at 15°-west longitude (over the Atlantic Ocean). The antenna diameter was 1.2 m<br />

(approximately 12° beamwidth) <strong>and</strong> the system G/T was –4 dB/K. Elevation angles

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