Method for predictive link planning

A method of transmitting data from a transmitting terminal to a receiving terminal over a channel, comprising the steps of:

• determining a series of locations for each of the receiving terminals, for exactly one transmitting terminal, and for an orbiting relay satellite;
• determining a link geometry of the channel between the transmitting terminal and the receiving terminal for each location in the series of locations, wherein determining the link geometry comprises determining a distance between the transmitting and receiving terminals for each location in the series of locations;
• determining channel impairments for the link geometries;
• predicting signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of the channel for the link geometries and the channel impairments;
• storing channel parameters based on the predicted SNRs in a lookup table;
• and
• retrieving the channel parameters from the lookup table using the distance between the transmitting and receiving terminals;
• and
• transmitting data from the transmitting terminal using the channel parameters, wherein the step of determining channel impairments comprises determining the channel impairments by varying link parameters, wherein the step of determining channel impairments further comprises using the link parameters as a priori information to maximize an instantaneous communication link rate between the receiving terminal and the transmitting terminal.