A MODEL FOR THE HANDOVER TRAFFIC IN LOW EARTH-ORBITING (LEO) SATELLITE NETWORKS FOR PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS

The spectacular growth of cellular telephone networks has demonstrated the demand for personal communications. Communication systems based o n low earth orbit (LEO) constellations of satellites seem to be an ade quate approach to achieve a world-wide network. When defining the capa city in terms of satellite circuits, the network designer has to take into account the handover traffic. Unfortunately, in a LEO communicati on network where handover is most often due to the network nodes motio n, handover traffic models for terrestrial cellular networks cannot be used. Hence specific models must be developed. This paper proposes an analytical model for the handover in LEO satellite networks. This mod el is applied to different network configurations and compared to disc rete-time simulations. Simulation results agree with those obtained fr om the analytical model.