Characterization and Performance Evaluation of Turbulent Plasma Sheath Channel

• Published in: China communications 2016-06, Vol.13 (6), p.88-99
• Main Authors: Zhang, Jingzhuo, He, Guolong, Bai, Peng, Lu, Jianhua, Ge, Ning
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Attenuation; Baseband; channel characteristics; error performance; fast fading; Frequency shift keying; plasma sheath; Plasma sheaths; Quadrature amplitude modulation; Time-domain analysis; 性能评价; 无线信道; 等离子体流场; 等离子体湍流; 等离子体通道; 等离子体鞘层; 表征; 高超声速飞行器
• ISSN: 1673-5447
• DOI: 10.1109/CC.2016.7513205

Radio waves are highly attenuated and distorted by turbulent plasma sheath around hypersonic vehicles in near space, leading to communication blackout. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the plasma channel characteristics and the communication performances over the channel. We treat the turbulent plasma medium as a fast fading wireless channel. The coherence time and the spectrum spread of the plasma sheath channel are obtained in terms of root-meansquare（RMS）. Baseband simulation scheme is proposed based on a stratified model of the plasma flow field. Results indicate that the coherence time is on the order of milliseconds and decreases rapidly with the increasing electron density turbulence. The spectrum spread due to plasma turbulence is also significant. Extensive simulations have been carried out to make communication performance evaluations. Quantitative results show that error floor takes place for PSK and QAM, while FSK with noncoherent detection is a promising method to mitigate the blackout problem.