Characterization of user mobility in low earth orbit mobile satellite systems

Future mobile communication networks will provide a global coverage by means of constellations with nongeosynchronous satellites. Multi-spot-beam antennas on satellites will allow a cellular coverage all over the Earth. Due to the unstationarity of satellites a call may require many cell changes during its lifetime. These passages will be managed by inter-beam handover procedures. This paper deals with the modeling of the user cell change process during call lifetime in Low Earth Orbit-Mobile Satellite Systems (LEO-MSSs). The analytical derivations presented in this study can be also applied to different mobility models provided that basic assumptions are fulfilled. This paper evaluates the impact of user mobility on the blocking performance of channel allocation techniques. Moreover, the handover arrival process towards a cell has been characterized by using a usual statistical parameter for stationary point processes. Finally, a performance analysis has been carried out on the basis of the classic teletraffic theory for telephone systems.