A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Engineering, School of Advanced Technologies

Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1998

In some recent studies, the use of low earth orbit satellite systems in various applications is considered. However, uniform distribution of traffic load is assumed in most of these studies. In this thesis, an analytical framework to study the nonuniformity in geographical distribution of the traffic load in low earth orbit satellite communication systems is presented. The teletraffic performances of the systems are estimated in terms of blocking, handover failure and noncompleted call probabilities. The system handover models are used with three different schemes for handover traffic. According to the numerical results, it is shown that the traffic nonuniformity gives significant effects to the characteristics of the system by decreasing the service quality. The performance study mainly focused on the IRIDIUM system, and examined all major critical aspects related to the nonuniform distributions. Moreover, the effects of prioritization handover schemes are also shown in this study.