Performance analysis of the delay-tolerant satellite distributed MAC reservation protocols

The key challenges of the QoS-oriented satellite MAC technology are conditioned mainly by long-delay space medium. They represent phenomena of MAC´s performance degradation (ldquotime barrierrdquo) and dynamical instability (ldquodynamic barrierrdquo) which appear when the propagation time increases. The delay-tolerant MACs should guarantee an effective overcoming of both barriers. We showed that the delay-tolerant abilities depend on the processing algorithm of MAC commands. The serial processing algorithm of the MAC commands (SCP) is characterized as delay-intolerant. The parallel commands´ processing algorithm (PCP) provides the time tolerance, i.e., effective overcoming of the time barrier, mainly. The PCP algorithm is used by the MAC reservation protocols with fixed, or pre-defined, superframe formats (RFS). The parallel-conveyor commands´ processing algorithm (CCP) guarantees the full delay tolerance abilities. The CCP algorithm is used by MAC reservation protocols with adaptive frames formats (RAF), which adjust to a current data flows. This paper presents the numeric-analytical method and performance analysis of the delay-tolerant and fully mesh, i.e., multipoint-to-multipoint (MPMP) mode, satellite MAC reservation protocols with distributed dynamic control of the quality of services (QoS). The comparative analysis of the named above MAC reservation schemas is also given.