A Markov chain model for tropospheric scatter links

A Markov chain model for predicting the performance of a communication channel is given. A method of obtaining the parameters is described. The data of tropospheric tests of two channels arc compared with the model calculations with respect to error-free runs and consecutive error runs. The model calculations are shown to match very closely to the data. The work on this model has led to improvement on the information rate of an error-correcting encoder-decoder that was being built.