Connectivity and other-user interference characteristics of broadcast protocols in satellite networks

Satellite communications applications have grown from using single hops between fixed earth stations to use of multiple hops through more than one satellite between fixed as well as mobile stations. With multiple satellites in a path from one point to another, it is necessary to consider the desirability of point-to-point links versus broadcast communications. The author examines this issue for low Earth orbit configurations from the aspects of mutual interference and connectivity. For the former, it is assumed that a common frequency allocation is used with the separation of users taking place by means of code division multiple access. The latter is lower-bounded by the minimum number of links from a given satellite to neighbor satellites