Archimedes mission aspects [mobile satellite communications]

Satellite technology is well suited to mobile communications, particularly over wide areas of Europe. The advent of such a service will help to equalize the availability of telecommunications services between urban and remote areas. The analysis of new communications services had led one to consider non-conventional orbits for future satellites system implementation. The main aspects of possible technical solutions are presented in terms of mission characteristics, showing the critical drawbacks in utilizing high elliptical orbits for the satellite system configuration developed under ESA contracts. The results of this effort have shown clearly that despite the singularity of these orbits, their use allows some advantages mainly related to the avoidance of shadowing effects and to the increased gain of the mobile antenna, so improving the link conditions. Apart from voice communications services, other potential applications of such a system have been envisaged, in an effort to improve the attractiveness of the Archimedes project