Abstract
Recent technological advances and standardization has led to the large scale adoption of personal mobile communications. Within years global personal communications will be provided by non-geostationary satellites. These satellite systems will complement the terrestrial mobile network coverage to provide one complete global network. Mobility management is a key issue in any personal communications network. Furthermore, the seamless integration between satellite and terrestrial systems will play a major role in the adoption of satellite personal communications. This thesis focuses on the optimization of mobility management procedures in an integrated satellite and GSM personal communication network. The coverage and mobile channel properties of first generation non-geostationary constellation proposals are analyzed (these being Globalstar, ICO and Iridium). A new LEO satellite constellation is proposed that has a similar number of satellites as Globalstar and Iridium but provides superior levels of satellite visibility over its service area. In order to overcome the problem of location area definition in a non-geostationary satellite constellation, two techniques are presented. Subsequently, the paging and location update signalling loads for each scheme are evaluated and optimized particularly in the urban and highway environments. These results are combined to arrive at the optimum location area size for each method of location area definition. A further problem caused by the motion of satellites is defining the service area of a gateway earth station. A previously proposed scheme is presented and its restrictions and implications discussed. Subsequently, a new scheme is proposed based on the highest satellite connectivity. This scheme is then combined with the optimized location area definition identified previously. Finally, issues associated with the integration of the two optimized schemes with the GSM system are presented.