A New Approach to Multipath Mitigation in Aeronautical Telemetry

Abstract

This paper compares the bit error rate performance of a single channel equalizer with the bit error rate performance of a multi-channel equalizer (in the form of the time-reversed space-time block code) using channels derived from multipath channel measurements at Edwards AFB, California, and Cairns Army Airfield, Ft. Rucker, Alabama. The results show that the performance of the multi-channel equalizer is better than the single channel equalizer over the weaker channel, but worse than the performance of the single channel equalizer over the stronger channel. We conclude that the best approach for the informed transmitter is to apply all available power to a single antenna, whereas the best approach for the uninformed transmitter is to apply equal power with transmit diversity to the two available antennas.