Capacity occupation strategy for data messaging over non-geostationary mobile satellite communication systems

Considerable interest has been focused on the possibility of employing a large number of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites to provide an overall global coverage. Capacity estimation of different LEO satellite constellations is derived in terms of satellite altitude and traffic offered. A capacity occupation strategy is proposed for the transmission of both telephone and wireless data messaging over LEO satellite channels. Telephone calls are treated on a blocked calls cleared basis, while data messages are treated on a blocked calls delayed system with infinite and finite queue length. Performance metrics are obtained as a function of the blocking probability of both telephone and data traffic, average delay time and average queue length of data messages at different ratios of telephone to data traffic.