Analysis of DAMA performance for tactical radio and satellite

Demand Assigned Multiple Access (DAMA) is a technology used to assign link capacity based on user demand. The allocation of capacity is limited by a set of constraints (e.g., priority of the traffic, link condition, RF interference, required bandwidth). Capacity is allocated in the time and frequency domains. An allocation algorithm determines per-user capacity for each assignment epoch. A packing algorithm assigns the actual time and frequency slots. Ideally, packing and allocation should be done jointly. However, these problems are generally solved separately due to computational complexity. This paper discusses the analysis of packing efficiency for a DAMA scheme that jointly considers packing and allocation. A mathematical programming model is applied to both a representative tactical radio network and a satellite network to determine packing efficiency. An allocation scheme is then derived from the packing efficiency. Packing overhead and traffic dropping probability are then calculated for the satellite case, assuming a uniform distribution of traffic per user. This enables us to determine how much traffic can be handled by a DAMA network without exhibiting excessive traffic loss.