Patent ID: 6859652

Claim:
A cellular communications system, comprising: a space based system comprising at least one satellite, each satellite comprising at least one antenna and establishing a first set of cells and transmitting and receiving Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) based waveforms using at least a first portion of at least one predetermined frequency band used by the first set of cells; a ground based system comprising at least one base transceiver station (BTS), each BTS establishing a second set of cells and transmitting and receiving GSM based waveforms utilizing at least a second portion of the one predetermined frequency band, said space based and ground based systems functioning substantially autonomously and at least one of using and reusing at least a portion of spectrum from the same at least one predetermined frequency band to be used as at least one of an uplink and downlink frequency channel from any of the frequencies within the at least one predetermined frequency band; at least one subscriber terminal communicating with at least one of said space based system and with said ground based system when located in at least one of the first and second set of cells; and at least one radio resource manager (RRM) determining available communication links between said at least one subscriber terminal and at least one of said space based system and said ground based system.