JOCOS: a triply geosynchronous orbit for global communications: an example

In the last decade the development of technology to support roaming of mobile users in a cellular network has open new market frontiers that show a 30% increase per year. The spectacular growing demand for mobile communications has stimulated the satellite community to conceive innovative satellite systems based on similar technology. In fact this technology, which is able to find and interconnect mobile users, roaming among cells generated by fixed base stations has been proposed to serve mobile users roaming among spots generated by fleet of satellites orbiting below the traditional geostationary orbit. The paper presents the advantages of selecting a peculiar 8 hours triply geosynchronous orbit (TGO). Particularly it is shown that a minimum of 6+1 TGO satellites is needed to form what is called JOCOS (Juggler Orbit COnStellation) that is able to cover the largest part of the Earth land masses with an elevation angle better than 20°. Furthermore it is demonstrated that thousands of orbital slots are available to accommodate traffic increase and new services operators. An application example called WAVES-JOCOS addressing the briefcase size terminals market and offering services in the order of hundreds kbit/s is also outlined