Satellite ATM networks: a survey

Satellite ATM networks have significant advantages over terrestrial ATM networks. Satellites provide unique advantages such as remote coverage with rapid deployment, distance insensitivity, bandwidth on demand, immunity to terrestrial disasters, and offering broadband links. Satellite ATM networks will play an important role in the rapidly evolving information infrastructure. However, there are several obstacles which need to be overcome so that satellite ATM networks can operate in full service. The objective of this survey is to present the state of the art in satellite ATM networks and to point out open research problems. We explain the satellite ATM network architecture and cover the requirements and technical barriers for seamless integration of ATM and satellite networks. We describe the feasibility of the existing ATM cell transport methods, and deal with conventional and new satellite link access methods, and some error control schemes for the satellite environment. We then describe the problems of the proposed traffic and congestion control schemes, followed by the error performance of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Service-Specific Connection-Oriented Protocol (SSCOP) for the satellite ATM network. We present basic requirements and a possible architecture for local area-metropolitan area network (LAN-MAN) interconnection using satellite ATM and then discuss the requirements for multimedia services in satellite ATM networks