Satellite forward VDES channel modeling and impact on higher-layer performance

VHF data exchange system (VDES) is an emerging maritime communications standard that is meant to provide ship-to-shore, shore-to-ship, and ship-to-ship information services. VDES also includes a satellite component to extend the service coverage also to the high sea. Ships can receive important information via VDES and access this service via satellite when they are far from the shore. This paper uses data taken during a measurement campaign to develop an ON-OFF model for the VDE-SAT downlink channel taking the multipath effects caused by sea reflections into account. This model has been used to evaluate the impact of packet-level forward error correction (FEC) schemes (i.e., ideal codes, RaptorQ codes, and 2-Dimension Reed-Solomon codes) to further protect transmissions from deep fading events and to evaluate the impact at the transport level considering the possibility to adopt the transmission control protocol (TCP) for a file map delivery service.