Performance analysis of the delay-tolerant satellite distributed MAC reservation protocols

Abstract

The key challenges of the QoS-oriented satellite MAC technology are conditioned mainly by long-delay space medium. They represent phenomena of MAC's performance degradation (“time barrier”) and dynamical instability (“dynamic barrier”) which appear when the propagation time increases. The delay-tolerant MACs should guarantee an effective overcoming of both barriers. We showed that the delay-tolerant abilities depend on the processing algorithm of MAC commands. The serial processing algorithm of the MAC commands (SCP) is characterized as delay-intolerant. The parallel commands' processing algorithm (PCP) provides the time tolerance, i.e., effective overcoming of the time barrier, mainly. The PCP algorithm is used by the MAC reservation protocols with fixed, or pre-defined, superframe formats (RFS). The parallel-conveyor commands' processing algorithm (CCP) guarantees the full delay tolerance abilities. The CCP algorithm is used by MAC reservation protocols with adaptive frames formats (RAF), which adjust to a current data flows. This paper presents the numeric-analytical method and performance analysis of the delay-tolerant and fully mesh, i.e., multipoint-to-multipoint (MPMP) mode, satellite MAC reservation protocols with distributed dynamic control of the quality of services (QoS). The comparative analysis of the named above MAC reservation schemas is also given.