Exploiting Hierarchical Terrestrial-Satellite Architectures to Handle Voice, Symmetric Data, and Asymmetric Data Connections

This article investigates new techniques for the dimensioning and the effective exploitation of radio resources in integrated terrestrial-cellular and satellite systems. A dynamically configurable radio resource management policy is proposed. Its main feature is the differentiated handling of user mobile calls, based on the type of service (voice, symmetric data, asymmetric data), the nature of the call (originating or handoff call) and the user mobility class (pedestrian or vehicular). The output of the study is particularly useful to support the design of next-generation wireless systems, which are based on a hierarchical cell structure where different cell types (e.g., macrocell and microcell) operate together with an overlapping satellite coverage.