Traffic performance analysis of handover in GMPCS

This paper presents an analysis of the handover process and its effect upon the traffic performance in global mobile personal communications by satellite (GMPCS). With the non-geostationary satellite used for the system, the handover scheme needs to be applied to complete calls without any interruption. An analytical model has been developed for the analysis of the handover process. We have derived mean number of handovers and handover delay by using the developed model. A suitable traffic model of the whole system has also been derived after due considerations of the handover process. The system performance measures include new call blocking probability, call dropping probability and mean number of handovers per call. A computer simulation has been developed and used. We also analyzed the system performance with a number of handover priority schemes applied. Based on the study results, handover parameters have been selected to maximize the traffic performance. It is shown that we can make overall traffic performance of GMPCS system improved by setting handover parameters properly.