Effects of data asymmetry on Shuttle Ku-band communications link performance

This paper systematically analyzes the signal-to-noise ratio degradations which can potentially occur due to data asymmetry in digital transmission systems. Suitable asymmetry models are developed and error probability performance for various types of data detectors (integrate-and-dump filter, filter-sample detector, and gated-integrate-and-dump filter) is derived. Although this work was done to resolve problems being encountered in the Shuttle Ku-band return link design, specifically for the 50 Mbit/s convolutionally encoded channel (NRZ format), generalizations are made which provide results for other cases of interest (other Ku-band return link channels, or other systems entirely). This paper therefore considers Manchester data formats (in addition to NRZ) and uncoded transmission (in addition to convolutionally coded transmission). The effects of bandlimiting are also considered.