Dedicated signalling channel vs random access signalling channel in satellites communications systems

The main aim of this paper is to contribute to the design of the signalling architecture for next-generation geo-satellite systems with on board processing functionality. We concentrate on the signalling channels, which are used by the satellite terminals for connection establishment. Two access methods are investigated: the dedicated and the random (Slotted Aloha) access. The dedicated access requires the introduction of a centralized scheduling technique in the network control centre. We study the system performance and demonstrate that the random access allows saving signalling bandwidth and maintaining high acceptance rate despite of collisions. This is achieved by harmonizing the random access with a centralised connection admission control algorithm and an intelligent scheduling of resource requests on board the satellite.