A QoS architecture for DVB-RCS next generation satellite networks

The standardization of a return channel via satellite (DVB-RCS) and satellite community efforts in term of interoperability over the last few years leads to quite a positive outcome: geostationary satellite networks are intended to provide broadband access to interactive multimedia services in low-infrastructure areas. However, in order to take in account real-time multimedia traffic, an efficient resource management scheme is still necessary to maximize the scarce uplink capacities usage. To address this capacity issue, this paper proposes a complete DVB-RCS QoS architecture that is implemented, thanks to an emulation platform, and evaluated with real multimedia applications. This paper first gives an overview of the QoS architecture usually used in DVBS/RCS satellite system, especially in layers 2 and 3. It then introduces the satellite system emulation used in the experimentation and its calibration. The main contribution of this work focuses on the signaling principle designed to allow applications to take benefit from the QoS features of the satellite system even if they are non-QoS aware. It is then shown how signaling in such QoS architecture allows the user to change dynamically the QoS of his application using QoS agent and QoS server applications even if the application is not QoS-aware. It is also given quantitative results related to such a dynamic QoS change in the experiments done on the satellite emulation system. Copyright (C) 2007.