T. K. Kuan, S. Hanwu and T. H. Dat, "Enhancing Speech Quality in Scintillating Satellite Communications: A Rician Fading Modeling Approach," 2025 Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference (APSIPA ASC), Singapore, Singapore, 2025, pp. 1835-1840, doi: 10.1109/APSIPAASC65261.2025.11249171.
Abstract:
Ionospheric scintillation causes rapid signal fluctuations that degrade satellite voice communications. While radio wave propagation under scintillation is well studied, its impact on speech signals is less understood. This work introduces a speech modeling framework using variable K-factor Rician fading to simulate scintillation effects. We propose two enhancement methods: a lightweight RNN for real-time use and a score-driven diffusion model for high-fidelity restoration. Both are trained on augmented datasets generated by our proposed scintillated speech model and joint optimization framework. Compared to the Cornell scintillation toolkit, our approach yields consistently better speech quality. This work contributes a practical solution for enhancing speech quality in satellite aviation communications.
License type:
Publisher Copyright
Funding Info:
This research / project is supported by the National Research Foundation, Singapore, and the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore - Aviation Transformation Programme
Grant Reference no. : ATP_SB-VHF_I2R