Medium access control scheme for supporting user mobility in digital video broadcasting-return channel via satellite/satellite second generation - general architecture and functionalities

This study aims at summarising the work done in the SatNEx project for the development and the performance evaluation of a new access scheme for multimedia data transmissions in digital video broadcasting-return channel via satellite (DVB-RCS)/satellite second generation (S2), applied to a mobile environment. The work has been stimulating because, as far as the authors know, this research topic has not yet been fully addressed in the literature. The authors started thinking about a realistic scenario of mobility, where novel services could be offered; having defined the scenario, the authors developed a satellite access scheme suitable for transmission control protocol (TCP) sessions and video streams in mobility. In this study, the authors present the reference architecture, the access scheme, the choice of the most suitable transmission parameters and the simulation results that are obtained when transmitting the two different types of data.