High capacity hybrid terrestrial/satellite cellular radio communication system

A hybrid cellular radiocommunication system, comprising:

• a network of terrestrial base stations interconnected together and linked to a terrestrial infrastructure, each terrestrial base station adapted, in an associated frequency sub-band, for transmitting on a forward downlink and/or receiving on a backward uplink service radiocommunication signals, and each defining by a radio range thereof upward and/or downward coverage of a terrestrial radiocommunication cell;
• at least one communication satellite, linked to the terrestrial infrastructure by at least one access station via a bidirectional junction link, and adapted for transmitting on a forward satellite downlink and/or receiving on a backward satellite uplink service radiocommunication signals distributed over radiocommunication satellite beams, the satellite beams each being associated with a frequency band and each defining by the radio range thereof up and/or down satellite coverage of a satellite umbrella cell of a plurality of satellite cells,
• a set of communication service terminals adapted for transmitting and/or receiving the radiocommunication signals, and distributed over the terrestrial cells and the satellite cells,
• means for assigning transmission resources, each being defined by a frequency sub-band and/or a time slot and/or a code, to the base stations or satellite beams, with the sub-bands being determined with respect to a first frequency band allocated to a set of base stations and a second frequency band allocated to the satellite beams,
• the base stations being distributed so as to be distinguishable by satellite cell according to a time-invariant distribution function,
• a congruence maintaining means, permanently and in a same link direction, of the coverage of each satellite cell with respect to the coverage of the terrestrial cells associated with the base stations contained in the satellite cell, coverage of a satellite cell being congruent with a predetermined terrestrial coverage set when the predetermined coverage set is entirely included in the satellite coverage.