Request Protocol Performance Impact for Mobile SATCOM with Dynamic Resource Allocation

Future communication schemes for transponding satellites will use dynamic resource allocation for efficient transmission of multi-media packet traffic. In typical centrally controlled schemes, a controller terminal is designated to collect resource requests from the other terminals and allocate slots. The delay between request generation and the related allocations reduces performance. For communications with terminals on-the-move, occasional blockage of the link is an additional impairment to the request-allocation protocol. This results infrequent lost request and allocation messages which may impair the ability of the terminal to communicate even when it is not blocked. We consider how the request-allocation protocol interacts with the on-the-move SATCOM channel for several allocation algorithms in the context of user-relevant performance metrics