Quality of service in mobile-satellite communication systems

In the paper service provision in a future telecommunication network where satellites are integrated in future personal communication networks (PCN) is studied. Critical issues regarding objective and subjective measures for the wide range of new telecommunications services (multimedia, universal personal communications, etc.) and digital technologies are analysed. After a review of the possible satellite system evolution toward PCS, service requirements and mobile terminal features are discussed. In order to develop and validate new performance measures the design of an experiment based on existing technological solutions is presented. Some observations are made on user-oriented QoS parameters for multimedia services