A new satellite system for land mobile communications at EHF

An architecture for a mobile satellite system proposed for integration with the pan-European GSM terrestrial cellular system is described. A cellular satellite system concept is outlined with emphasis on multispot coverage of the cell, and a carrier-to-interference analysis is performed. It is noted that a suitable payload structure is needed to allow the flexible management of the channels assigned to a certain cell, and a multiport transponder (MPT) payload architecture is introduced, where an MPT is a wideband transparent multibeam cell-transponder provided with an intrinsic soft-fail capability. A proposal for a comprehensive program encompassing an experiment including a propagation mission and a communication mission is discussed, and attention is focused on experiments with highly inclined orbit mobile-radio channels, statistical channel models, and mobile-terminal terrain antenna.