Globalstar for the Military

Globalstar, a new satellite-based mobile voice/data telephone service, is being planned by LQSS for operation in 1998. It will let military personnel, using handheld, ship-board, or vehicular mobile terminals in even the most remote areas of the world, to stay in contact with each other and with personnel who are on established communication networks. A constellation of 48 low-earth orbiting (LEO) satellites and an advanced method of digital signal formatting will provide low-cost and reliable voice, data, fax and position-locating services to military personnel in most areas of the world. Globalstar will interoperate with existing local (domestic or foreign), long-distance, public, private, terrestrial-cellular, DoD, and specialized telecommunications networks. The system will permit the military, for its general purpose communications, to share with commercial MSS (Mobile Satellite Services) at low cost. This paper includes an overview of the Globalstar system and describes possible DoD applications