Engineering aspects and performance evaluation of a multi-service low Earth orbit mobile satellite communication system

Thanks to their low altitudes, low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites experience lower propagation delay with lower power requirements and smaller antennas than their geostationary counterparts. However, more satellites are needed for global coverage. In addition, as the satellites are not stationary, a massive handover rate has emerged. The engineering aspects of the LEO mobile satellite systems are presented. In addition, a radio resource management method is devised for minimising service dropping as well as achieving fairness in service quality perceived by users roaming in the nonoverlapping and overlapping regions which usually exist between spotbeams. The prospect of controlling the access to spotbeam channels based on the location of a mobile station relative to the region of the spotbeam overlaps is suggested. Then, a teletraffic model is developed for the LEO satellites network when providing voice, data and paging services. Performance measures of interest are investigated.