Design of Enhanced Paging for LTE-based Satellite Mobile Communications

Satellite mobile communications always require LOS environments. If the LOS path is obstructed, the signal strength can be much lower than the SNR threshold for normal communication, so a coming call will not reach the user. In this case, an enhanced paging is needed to tell the user to move out of the shadow to receive the call. In this paper, a enhanced paging design is proposed for LTE-based satellite mobile communications. Basic design issues are discussed, including the information to transmit, the resource allocation for in LTE framework, techniques for reliable transmissions and energy saving for un-targeted uses. Two implementation schemes of the enhanced paging are simulated to show the performance improvement relative to the normal paging in LTE systems.