The design of a satellite mobile multimedia communication system operating at Ka band and using synchronous CDMA is presented. The air interface described in the paper was derived taking into account the requirements induced by the provision of multimedia services to compact portable and mobile terminals. In order to minimize the complexity of the satellite payload, the concept of partial frequency reuse is introduced. A novel algorithm based on evolutionary theory is derived in order to optimize the corresponding link dimensioning. The satellite payload is described, and techniques reducing the computational requirements are proposed. It is then shown that the on-board complexity associated with the given design is within acceptable technological limits.

The packet reservation multiple access (PRMA) protocol was originally proposed for small cells. However, efficient channel utilisation of PRMA has encouraged research into its applicability to other communication technologies such as GSM/DCS and DECT (digital European cordless telecommunications). In this paper, we apply a modified version of PRMA, called burst reservation multiple access (BRMA), to full- and half-rate GSM/DCS as well as DECT. We then proceed to analyse the system performance using an equilibrium point Analysis (EPA). Finally, the performances of these adapted systems are evaluated. Results show that BRMA, with delayed feedback messages, considerably improves the capacity of these TDMA-based systems (up to 88%) while simultaneously satisfying a 1% speech packet dropping limit.

Packet reservation multiple access (PRMA) and advanced time division multiple access (ATDMA) protocols (proposed in the RACE project such as PRMA++) are multiaccess protocols proposed for the third generation mobile communications systems. The main factor apart from channel impairments, which affects the performance of such protocols is collision either within an information time slot (in PRMA) or a reservation time slots (in PRMA++). These collisions waste available channel resources and can cause undesirable congestion and lower the service quality. We generalise the idea of PRMA which results in the upper-bound capacity calculation and reveals new insight into the relationship between the parameters of such protocols. The performance dependent parameters such as delay, throughput, statistics, capacity and packet dropping probability are mathematically analysed and generalised such that they can be applicable to all reservation-based multiple access schemes. Through such analysis the upper-bound performance for such protocols is derived. The sensitivity of the system performance to different system measures (such as throughput, delay, packet dropping statistics) are evaluated for a range of system parameters (bandwidth, number of users, voice activity factor). Finally, the performance of PRMA and PRMA++ with their upper-bound values are compared.