Research Letter A Cross-Layer Rate Control Mechanism for Link-Adaptive Satellite Integrated Services

This paper presents a mechanism for dynamic rate control of satellite integrated services, based on a cross-layer approach, utilising link quality feedback from the satellite terminals. The mechanism, namely, satellite resource management system (SRMS) relies on the adaptive coding and modulation (ACM) capabilities of DVB-S2 in order to perform real-time adjustments on the physical, network and services layer and optimise the usage of satellite spectrum. The functionality of the SRMS is discussed along with its implementation in the frame of the IST IMOSAN Project. Simulation results are presented, involving modelled rain fading and prioritised heterogeneous services, which illustrate the efficiency of the proposed solution against current static transmission schemes. Copyright © 2007 G. Gardikis and A. Kourtis. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 1