Using low Earth orbiting satellites to backup the support of the existing ground mobile communications

Architecture and protocol are proposed and studied for a system in which low Earth orbiting satellites are used as a means to backup the existing terrestrial microwave mobile communication system. To incorporate these satellites, the existing ground system needs only to be modified slightly. The result is a great reduction in hand-off blocking probability. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed protocol, a model taking reality into consideration is established. The results are also checked with computer simulations