Bandwidth management of MilSatCom links for multimedia network traffic

With the digitization of the battlefield, there is a need to establish an efficient worldwide wireless network infrastructure that offers timely and accurate command, control and intelligence information. A terrestrial infrastructure is frequently not a viable option due to the mobility requirements of deployed units and the hostile terrain in which they must often operate. In contrast, satellites can potentially provide an essential component of this global grid. Unfortunately, terrestrial network protocols do not behave well over satellite links, and military satellites have not yet been designed to support multimedia network traffic efficiently, both of which result in poor response times and low bandwidth usage. The expected performance of multimedia traffic supported over military satellites is analyzed. Application response time and bandwidth usage are used as a measure of performance in a simulation environment. Simulation results are given, and a number of improvements, such as enhancements to the TCP stack and dynamic bandwidth management techniques, are proposed.