Enhancement of cellular service via the use of satellite capacity

In mobile communications, new services are being launched that provide extended geographical coverage of cellular service via the satellite. The additional satellite capacity can be shared among all the cells, thereby augmenting the dedicated cellular capacity available within the cells. This additional shared capacity has the inherent potential for increasing efficiency, as the extra channels can be assigned wherever they are needed rather than pre‐allocating them. We considered the performance advantage the satellite offers in off‐loading congestion within the cellular covered area. We propose a model for the hybrid network based on the recently proposed Multiple Service Multiple Resource concept. This model has been used in performing a detailed analysis that demonstrates the marked improvement in performance obtained by augmenting cellular capacity via the satellite and quantifies the gains achieved therein.