A satellite-augmented cellular network concept

Some next-generation personal communication systems propose the use of satellite systems for extending geographical coverage of cellular service. We pursue the idea of using satellite capacity to offload congestion within the area serviced by the terrestrial network. An integrated satellite-cellular network configuration is considered. The performance of this system is evaluated by means of an analytical model for a one-dimensional (highway) cellular system overlaid with satellite footprints and by means of simulation for a planar cellular network with satellite spot beam support. Under certain re-use assumptions, an improvement is found in the blocking performance of the integrated system over the Erlang-B blocking of a purely cellular circuit switched systems. This is achieved by efficient partitioning (static) of the total bandwidth into space and terrestrial segments. Major factors that influence performance, such as different reuse considerations on the satellite and cellular systems, cell size to footprint size ratios, admission control and call management policies, and changes in traffic patterns, are also investigated.