An analysis of uplink multiple access protocols in meshed VSAT satellite networks

The authors give a brief description of the meshed very small aperture terminal (VSAT) satellite network under investigation by the NASA Lewis Research Center and a detailed performance model of the uplink protocol access techniques. The satellite has eight uplink beams with one or two dedicated 64 Kb/s access request channels per beam. The request channel is a multiple access packet transmission channel and adopts the slotted ALOHA protocol. The performance analysis reveals the effects of various request channel implementations on data channel throughput and channel connection delay. System parameters considered include the number of request channels, the offered load of request channels, request buffering strategies, and channel allocation/deallocation strategies. The result is a part of the performance analysis of the meshed VSAT satellite network