Design issues and QoS handover management for broadband LEO satellite systems

Today, the wider spectrum of applications that wireless networks are called to support, presses the designers of low earth orbit (LEO) satellite systems for a more efficient exploitation of the limited radio spectrum. The limited commercial success of the first LEO satellite networks, which were geared towards narrowband services, has been the main motive for the reconsideration of the set of services that these networks should provide. In this context, a broadband LEO satellite system is examined in the paper. In this kind of networks, the handing-over of a call between contiguous cells or satellites is one of the dominant factors that degrade the quality of the provided services. In the paper, a satellite handover technique is proposed and evaluated for systems that present partial satellite diversity in order to provide an efficient handover strategy and QoS in multimedia applications, examining the impact of the footprint´s overlapping area on the system performance as well.