Local Switching, local processing

The Local Switching function designed by Cell & Sat reduces significantly the cost of operating remote 2G cellular base stations. It complements the silence reduction and bandwidth gains of existing compression products and detects situations where speech communications can be routed locally to avoid unnecessary satellite transmission.

Local Switching is performed at the interface with the BTS. During a conversation between two mobiles terminals connected to the same satellite terminal, only the signaling information is transmitted while voice traffic is routed locally.

The Local Switching combined with link compression functions reduces the satellite costs by a factor as high as 50% and improves significantly the perceived speech quality by avoiding double satellite hops.

For data services over 3G and 4G cellular networks, local servers and local edge processing functions can be implemented to minimize the amount of traffic over satellite links, and to improve the overall response time.