This book of proceedings contains papers for the Second European Workshop on Mobile/Personal Satcoms (EMPS '96), held in Rome, Italy, and hosted by the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. The EMPS '96 workshop follows the edition of two years ago, and is intended as an occasion for exchange of information and opinions among experts in the fast-growing field of mobile satellite communications. With respect to the first successful edition we only made one main modification. We issued a formal call for papers, instead oflimiting the selection process to invited papers as was in the past: 60 papers were received from 18 countries. Each paper has been reviewed by at least two referees, and then 41 papers were selected by the Workshop Steering Committee (WSC). An invited introductory lecture opens the workshop and is given by Dr. Andrew J. Viterbi, who is also honorary chairman of EMPS '96. Satellite Personal Communications Networks (SPCNs) are now expected to grow very fast, even beyond the most optimistic forecast: their unique feature to establish ex abrupto a world-wide communication fabric is certainly the winning card. Market analyses now indicate that LEO networks already planned to be operational around 1998 even risk being overwhelmed by users request, so that their extensions are already being considered. And, additionally, multimedia SPCNs are also being introduced at higher frequencies to provide broadband services.

The shift from network-oriented to user-oriented services in the 80s and early 90s has increased the penetration of satellite services into the user community. Parallel to this, worldwide interest has arisen in Personal Communication Services (PCS), where satellites play a crucial role in the provision of PCS all over the world. Satellite Personal Communication Networks (S-PCN) are extremely attractive because they can serve a significant sector of the rapidly growing cellular market. This publication presents market perspectives and technological aspects in relation to satellite mobile and personal communication services. Papers were written by some of the most acclaimed European specialists in PCS. They present basic concepts and the latest research results.