Performance of mismatched Viterbi receiver on satellite channels

This paper presents an analysis of a satellite communication system using a Viterbi receiver. Here we have a bandlimited nonlinear channel where both uplink and downlink are taken into account as well as the effect of Intersymbol Interference, phase and time synchronization errors. In order that ISI can be combatted effectively, we use a Viterbi demodulator which is designed for the satellite channel when there is no uplink noise. The Viterbi demodulator for the channels with large memory is too complex to be implemented. To reduce the complexity, a Viterbi demodulator with memory shorter than the true channel memory is used. The objective of this paper is to analyze the performance degradation of this 'Mismatched Viterbi Receiver' due to the uplink noise and memory truncation, and to understand how the time and phase synchronization errors influence the performance.