Performance of a global circuit-switched satellite communication network

A circuit-switched network consisting of multiple low Earth orbiting satellites and three geostationary satellites is considered. Crosslinks among low-orbit satellites are used as the major communication channels, while calls are routed via geostationary satellites only when low-orbit routes exceed or equal to a hop-count threshold. Simulation results are used to illustrate the network throughput under various traffic conditions and different link capacities. The impact of satellite failures on the network performance is also investigated.>