Modeling and simulation of the resource allocation process in a bandwidth-on-demand satellite communications network

The authors describe the modeling and simulation of a frequency-division multiple-access (FDMA) satellite bandwidth-on-demand (BOD) service. The class of resource allocation processes to which the satellite BOD application belongs is identified and contrasted with more common resource allocation processes. Several unique features of BOD service complicate the performance specification, modeling, and analysis. The authors divide the modeling problem into three fundamental components: modeling the resource algorithm and modeling the processing of individual resource requests. These modeling components are illustrated with the satellite BOD application. In addition, simulation of the resource allocation requires three additional components: an easy-to-use user input interface, performance measures and statistics gathering, and presentation of simulation results (user output interface). The architecture of the simulation software (resource allocation analysis program, or RAAP) is presented in terms of these six components. To illustrate RAAP´s capabilities, example simulation results are given