Mobility management in Inmarsat mobile satellite communications systems

Inmarsat operates digital mobile satellite communication systems for maritime, aeronautical and land mobile users. These systems currently employ routing techniques that require the calling party to have a-priori knowledge of the current location (satellite region) of the called mobile. It is now proposed to incorporate mobility management features into the Inmarsat mobile networks, which would enable the implementation of automatic routing of terrestrial network to mobile calls. This would be facilitated by the automatic registration (log-in) by mobile users prior to engaging in communications, the dynamic management of registration information within location register database(s), and the use of advanced message based signalling systems within the terrestrial networks capable of call routing on the basis of information derived from the location register database(s)