Management of Mobility Services on Geostationary Satellite Platforms

For over half a century, artificial satellites orbiting the Earth have provided an alternative method for accessing various services useful to the world community: from oldest television and telephone services to the most recent internet and positioning services, life without one or more of these facilities is nowadays unthinkable. A great advantage provided by this type of technology is the possibility of having much more extensive coverage compared to classic cellular networks or wired infrastructures. Satellite coverage is usually organized into small adjacent coverage areas called "Beams", which considered together cover vast geographical areas: the coverage of a Geostationary (GEO) satellite can usually extend over an entire continent. For this reason, satellite communications have also become essential for use by cruises or airliners. The goal of this thesis, written in collaboration with Eutelsat Group, is to examine the mobility service, to analyze the complexity of the setup and study the management of terminal handovers between adjacent beams on different platforms. In the first part of this work, the satellite platforms and their functioning will be described. Then, the various handover methodologies will be described and the results of the laboratory simulations will be analyzed. In the final part, the tests carried out in the field will be analysed.