A broadband communication system provides broadband communication services onboard an aircraft. The broadband communication system includes a satellite communication transceiver, a direct air-to-ground communication (DA2GC) transceiver, and a controller. The satellite communication transceiver is configured to communicate directly with a target satellite providing a satellite communication data pathway with a satellite ground station connected to ground networks. The DA2GC transceiver is configured to communicate directly with a DA2GC ground station providing an DA2GC data pathway with the ground networks. The controller is configured to control handoff between the satellite communication transceiver and the DA2GC transceiver for data communications between the broadband communications system and the ground networks, based on performance of at least one of the satellite communication data pathway and the DA2GC data pathway.

The present invention relates to the field of satellite communications, and in particular to a method for handover of a satellite base station, a terminal, the satellite base station, and a storage medium, for use in solving the problem that the current method for handover of the satellite base station is not accurate. In embodiments of the present invention, a terminal determines a pitch angle when accessing the satellite base station; and if the pitch angle is determined within a preset range, the terminal performs inter-satellite handover. Because in the embodiments of the present invention, the terminal can determine, according to the pitch angle and the preset range, whether to perform handover of accessing the satellite base station without additionally calculating other reference information, implementation of a system is simple, and a timing when the terminal needs to perform handover of the satellite base station can be accurately determined according to the preset range, so as to achieve quick and accurate handover of the satellite base station and improve determination efficiency of handover of the satellite base station.

Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, an aerial base station determining operating frequencies of terrestrial base stations, and taking one or more actions to reduce the potential for interference between the aerial base station and the terrestrial base stations. Actions taken by the aerial base station may include changing frequency, changing altitude, changing location, and changing transmit power. Other embodiments are disclosed.

A satellite communication system comprises a satellite configured to provide a plurality of spot beams adapted for communication using time domain beam hopping to switch throughput among spot beams of the plurality of spot beams. The plurality of spot beams includes a first spot beam that illuminates and communicates with a first gateway and a first set of subscriber terminals. The satellite is configured to implement a beam hopping plan that during a hopping period provides throughput to the first spot beam for an aggregated time duration based on bandwidth assignments to the first gateway and the first set of subscriber terminals.

An apparatus and method are disclosed for mitigating pointing errors resulting from satellite antennas. Reports are received from terminals in a beam hopping satellite communication system, and a pointing error associated with a satellite antenna is determined. The best beam for communicating with each terminal is selected based on the pointing error. A beam list containing the instantaneous traffic demand of terminals for each beam in the system is generated. An active beam set is then selected from the beam list for transmitting data during the next hop in the satellite communication system.

This application provides methods and apparatuses for uplink timing synchronization. The method includes: determining, based on beam information of a first beam and ephemeris information of the satellite base station, an uplink timing frame number of a first cell corresponding to the first beam; determining timing information of a first terminal device in the first cell based on the uplink timing frame number of the first cell, where the timing information is used to indicate a timing advance or a timing lag; and outputting the timing information.

This disclosure provides a satellite beam offset processing method, a device and a medium. The method includes: a network side device indicating a satellite beam offset parameter to a terminal via a broadcast message and/or a dedicated signalling; the terminal receiving the satellite beam offset parameter indicated by the network side device via the broadcast message and/or the dedicated signalling; and the terminal adjusting a communication process of the terminal according to the satellite beam offset parameter.

Provided are a measurement method and apparatus, and devices. The method comprises: a terminal device acquiring a plurality of measurement parameters of a network device; and the terminal device determining a first measurement parameter from the plurality of measurement parameters, and performing measurement on a TN cell according to the first measurement parameter. The communication performance between the terminal device and the network device is improved.

A method implemented by a user equipment performs a handover between a first cell and a second cell in a network comprising a satellite communication network, the first cell and the second cell being supported by one or more satellites of the satellite communication network, the first cell corresponding to a first base station and the second cell corresponding to a second base station, at least the first cell being supported by a non-geostationary orbit satellite of the satellite communication network, the method including: determining a value to be used as a timing advance in the second cell; and performing an uplink transmission with the second base station using the value to be used as a timing advance in the second cell.

There is provided an apparatus, said apparatus comprising means for determining which of at least two lower layer radio units co-located at a first location, each lower layer radio unit associated with a higher layer radio unit, has a best path to the associated higher layer radio unit and causing the transmit power of the determined one of the at least two lower layer radio units received at a user equipment to be higher relative to the transmit power of any of the other of the at least two lower layer radio units received at the user equipment.