A Movable Boundary Approach for Serving Bursts on the Up/Down Link in a Low Earth Orbit Satellite Constellation

Abstract:
The need for serving numerous requests with different Quality of Service QoS requirements on the Up/Down Link UDL of a Low Earth Orbit LEO satellite constellation justifies the proposal of a burst level service in this context. In fact, the UDL is a scarce resource that needs therefore to be shared efficiently. Serving requests at the call level appears to be bandwidth wasteful since resources are still allocated to a communication even during silence periods. A burst level service on the other hand allows for an increase in resources utilization while still providing for QoS requirements. In the context of this study, three service classes are considered: voice service, a real time service with very strict constraints over the delay and the bandwidth, data service with guarantees but with less stringent requirements than what is required for voice, and best effort BE service with no guarantees requirements. A new form of movable boundary approach, operating exclusively at the burst level, is used in order to accommodate a greater number of communications of each class. Different techniques for varying the boundary value are proposed and analyzed.