Analysis of bandwidth allocation schemes for transmission of VBR video traffic on a FODA satellite network

FODA, an access protocol for satellite networks based on a TDMA technology, is designed to support integrated services. To this end, FODA provides two types of service: synchronous and asynchronous; only the users of the synchronous service have guaranteed bandwidth. In the paper the authors focus on the synchronous service alone and investigate static bandwidth allocation strategies which satisfy the quality of service (QoS) requirements (i.e. a limited transfer delay and a packet loss rate -6) for the transmission of the data generated by a variable bit rate (VBR) video codec. By solving an analytical model it is shown that, due to the stringent QoS constraints, the amount of reserved bandwidth for VBR video applications must be much higher than their throughput. Hence a portion of low-priority traffic (e.g. EDP data) can be transmitted on the FODA synchronous services to utilise the satellite link to the maximum extent. Via simulation, the authors analyse, for the bandwidth allocation schemes which provide an acceptable QoS for high-priority traffic, the QoS available to low-priority users.