IJSCN Special Issue on ASMS2004

The conference was organized by the Task Force on Advanced Satellite Mobile Systems (ASMS-TF), which was founded at the initiative of the European Commission (EC) and of the European Space Agency (ESA), to foster this industrial segment.The ASMS-TF works on several fronts, including market studies, research and development, test and demonstrations, regulatory and standardization issues, along with public relations and publicity.Indeed, to the end of disseminating to the widest possible audience the culture and the new findings in the field of mobile satellite communications the ASMS-TF organizes periodic Conferences.The steady growth in paper submissions and attendance experienced by the ASMS Conferences testifies of the new path taken by the Satellite Communications field after the downturns at the end of the last millennium.Indeed, Satellite Communication systems are growing by the day, counting now millions of subscribers all over the world.Satellites provide both direct access to, and the backbone of European and worldwide digital information broadcast networks, as well as interactive and subscription TV services, mobile services to ships, aircrafts and landbased users, and data distribution within business networks.Satellites are also a key element in the Internet backbone, and enable both broad and narrowband Internet access services from remote and rural locations.This Issue collects the extended versions of six of the best papers presented at the ASMS2004 Conference.The papers have been selected with the aim of providing an insight in the developments and findings in this exciting field.Three papers deal with system aspects and three with implementation issues.The first paper 'Development of Mobile Broadband Interactive Satellite Access System for Ku/Ka Band', by Yun-Jeong Song, Pan-Soo Kim, Deock-Gil Oh, Soon-Ik Jeon and Ho-Jin Lee, presents the design of a mobile broadband interactive satellite access system based on DVB-S and DVB-RCS standards, devoted to land, maritime, and aeronautical applications.The key aspects of the design of the hub and mobile terminal are addressed focusing on the demodulation method, resource management scheme and mobile terminal structure, including antenna aspects.The second paper, 'A DVB/Inmarsat Hybrid Architecture for Asymmetrical Broadband Mobile Satellite Services', authored by Bjrn Roger Andersen, Odd Gangaas, and Jens Andenaes provides a technical overview of the system architecture of an L-band and Ku-band hybrid solution for provision of asymmetrical broadband services to mobile terminals, based on integrating DVB-S broadcast channels operating at Ku-band with the Inmarsat Mobile Packet Data Service system operating at L-band.The discussion deals with regulatory aspects,