Impact of cell mobility on handovers in low earth orbit satellite systems

The relative motion direction of spot-beams decides the handover relation between cells for users in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite systems, and directly affects the performance of handovers for users. User mobility models are developed for two typical cell motion patterns, mobility parameters such as cell dwell time, handover probabilities and average number of handover requests are analyzed. The impact of cell mobility on user's handovers has been investigated by simulations for a channel allocation technique. It has been shown that model II has the better performance than model I, and is more applicable for LEO satellite systems with small cell overlaps, reference can be supplied for spot-beams coverage layout.