SIP-based QoS control over satellite networks

Satellite access networks (SAN) are expected to play a decisive role in bridging the digital divide through providing broadband access to multimedia services in geographical area where terrestrial access networks like cable or ADSL cannot be deployed. SANs currently lack a clear QoS architecture in order to fit seamlessly into the end-to-end NGN framework. Several architectures mixing SIP QoS layer mechanisms with specific satellite MAC dynamic allocation schemes are already designed. However, very few multimedia applications can actually benefit from these architectures since most of them are not QoS aware. This work presents a SIP based multimedia signaling architecture where existing SIP applications can beneficiate from a QoS enabled IP network without undergoing any adjustments or modifications. In addition to that, the realization of the proposed solution is also described along with its performance evaluation tests and their results on an emulated satellite platform, providing DiffServ services, which was implemented during the European IST SATIP6 project.