TRANSMIT DIVERSITY SCHEME FOR DUAL-ANTENNA AERONAUTICAL TELEMETRY SYSTEMS

Abstract

The use of two antennas on an aeronautical telemetry transmitter is a common practice for overcoming signal obstruction that can occur during air vehicle maneuvering. However, this practice also leads to interference nulls that can cause dramatic degradation in the average signal integrity. This paper discusses the application of a transmit diversity scheme capable of overcoming this interference problem. The development leads to symbol error probability expressions that can be applied to assess the performance of the scheme relative to that of traditional schemes. Representative computational examples demonstrate the potential of the method.