Cooperative Coverage Extension in Land Mobile Satellite Networks

Abstract

This chapter is dedicated to the application of cooperative relaying in heterogeneous land mobile satellite (LMS) systems. Vehicular terminals are considered. We focus on a Urban scenario, an environment characterized by intermittent satellite reception due to the shadowing effect of surrounding buildings. We study benefits and limits of the cooperative approach adopting a network model that is at the same time tractable and of practical interest.We derive an analytical lower bound on the coverage and show that there is a trade-off between this and the rate at which the information can be injected in the network. We also describe a possible implementation scheme for cooperative coverage extension in heterogeneous satellite LMS systems adopting the ETSI Digital Video Broadcasting—Satellite services to Handheld (DVB-SH) standard in the space segment.