Satellite/terrestrial interoperation in personal communications networks

The vision of personal communications networks and services that support personal and mobile operation in the many phases of our daily lives has been aggressively sold by market researchers and has been embraced by an enthusiastic user community. The question of how we are to plan and develop these services in the light of the current complexity of market, technology and standards has no consistent answer. The paper addresses the single issue of how satellite and terrestrial components of PCS can be integrated into the transparent and ubiquitous network vision that the marketeers and users have embraced. The paper addresses this issue by discussing the current functional architecture for PCS and looking at issues associated with each functional element and interface. These issues are summarized and recommendations are made for areas of cooperation among the satellite and terrestrial communities