Energy-Efficient QoS Provisioning in Random Access Satellite NDMA Schemes

Random access approaches in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks are usually incompatible with the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for multimedia traffic, especially when hand-held terminals must operate with a very low signal-to-noise ratio. This paper proposes the Satellite Random Network Diversity Multiple Access (SR-NDMA) protocol that handles multimedia traffic under this context through the combination of a random and scheduled access scheme. The protocol uses a multi-packet receiver, for Single Carrier with Frequency Domain Equalization (SC-FDE) in the uplink, that gradually reduces the packet error rate with additional transmissions. The paper proposes analytical performance models for the throughput, delay and energy efficiency - as long as terminals have finite queues. System parameters are defined to enhance the energy efficiency while satisfying the QoS requirements for limited queue and bit-rate constraints. Results show that the proposed system is energy efficient and provides enough QoS to support multimedia services such as video telephony.