Importance

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Abstract

A communication system is described for providing voice channel communication between any of many thousands of moderate cost and low power mobile stations dispersed over a large area such as the continental United States, and which is especially useful for connecting users who are primarily stationed in rural areas that cannot be economically served by trunk dispatch mobile networks. The system includes a geostationary satellite utilizing a large UHF antenna that can receive a transmission from a caller and retransmit it over any one beam of a matrix of narrow beams, so the chosen beam covers an area in which a designated called party is located. A single up-link control channel occupying a narrow frequency band, can be utilized to receive dial up signals from a caller, and another single down-link control channel can be utilized to ring up the called party located anywhere within the continental United States. The satellite antenna includes a matrix of feed horns that not only direct the beams in a controlled matrix onto the area of the continental United States, but also permit detection of the region from which the caller's signal is transmitted and the region from which the called party' s answer is received, to enable the interconnection of signals received from these two regions.

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First Claim