A unified performance evaluation of integrated mobile satellite systems with ancillary terrestrial component

In coverage areas overlapped by the mobile satellite system (MSS) and the ancillary terrestrial component (ATC) of integrated MSS/ATC networks, users can suffer severe co-channel interference (CCI) due to the coexistence of MSS and ATC signals. The vast difference between the characteristics of the desired channels for a user, depending on whether it is connected to the satellite or to the terrestrial station, makes the corresponding performance evaluation very challenging. This paper tackles this issue by using the powerful generalized-K distribution, and offers a unified closed-form analysis for the system performance of both types of connections. In particular, it is revealed that the user's diversity gain depends only upon the minimum between the fading parameter and the shadowing parameter of the desired channel, regardless of the CCI. Also, the coding gain increases with the diversity gain. The effectiveness of the analysis is corroborated by Monte Carlo simulations.