Session establishment over satellite-UMTS

As part of the roll out of Universal Mobile Telecommunication Systems (UMTS), a satellite component has been identified, aiming at providing a seamless communication. Since an all IP architecture has been defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for the terrestrial component in Release 5 and beyond, an integration of satellite in the IP network is needed. Thus this paper aims to present a possible architecture for a seamless integration of an IP-based terrestrial/satellite network. We describe how sessions based on session initiation protocol (SIP) can be established between the mobile terminal (UE) under the coverage of Satellite-UMTS with other end users. The impact of random access delay and SIP message lengths on the session setup delay are analysed and demonstrated via performance evaluation in OPNET.