Performance analysis for the forward link of multiuser satellite communication systems

Summary Broad‐band satellite communication is an indispensable method to provide seamless connectivity for people especially in remote areas. This paper analyzes the performance of the forward link of a multiuser satellite system operating in Ka band, where a gateway delivers signal to a satellite that forwards the amplified signal to multiple users on the ground. By assuming that satellite links experience double lognormal fading due to rain attenuation and taking the effects of antenna pattern and path loss into account, we first exploit the opportunistic user scheduling (OUS) scheme to obtain the maximal output signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) expression of the satellite system. Then, the analytical expressions for both outage probability (OP) and ergodic capacity (EC) of the considered satellite system are derived. Finally, simulation results demonstrate the validity of the theoretical analysis and the superiority of the OUS scheme in comparison with round‐robin scheme.