Adaptive burst targeted demand assignment multiple access (BTDAMA) for geostationary satellite systems

The burst targeted demand assignment multiple access (BTDAMA) protocols incorporate an original approach to DAMA, which eliminates the fundamental end-to-end delay bound associated with the traditional DAMA techniques. Whilst they offer significant improvements in the achievable delay/utilisation performance for bursty packet transmission over satellite, they are constrained by the initial build up of packets at the start of traffic bursts. In this paper, we introduce the adaptivity to the uplink frame that enables the proportion of alternative types of capacity allocation to be varied on a dynamic basis. Sufficient demand assigned capacity is assigned to meet the instantaneous user requirements, with spare capacity allocated by an alternative strategy to assist with initial throughput at the start of bursts. Results show that this approach enhances the end-to-end delay distribution and delay jitter performance compared with the conventional static frame BTDAMA schemes.