Satellite clusters: a performance study

A performance study of two onboard stored, baseband switched, TDMA satellites interconnected through intersatellite links is presented. The uplinks are operated under the slotted ALOHA policy, while the downlinks and intersatellite links are operated using TDM policy. Each satellite has a finite buffer capacity for successful packets arriving, on the uplinks and on the intersatellite links. The authors introduce an approximate analytical model that determines the satellite cluster performance in terms of mean delay, throughput, and overflow probability. The system performance is obtained as a function of the system load, traffic distribution, number of uplinks, number of buffers, number of Earth zones, number of transponders at each satellite, and the intersatellite link capacity. The analytical results were within the confidence intervals of the simulation results obtained with 99% confidence level. Using this model, the system designer can obtain the minimal system configuration for a required system performance