AN OPTIMAL SWITCHING ALGORITHM FOR MULTIBEAM SATELLITE SYSTEMS WITH VARIABLE BANDWIDTH BEAMS

Authors consider a satellite-switched time division multiple access (SS/TDMA) system with M uplink beams and N downlink beams, where uplink beam i has bandwidth beta //i and downlink beam j has bandwidth alpha //j. The maximum traffic which can be handled by the satellite (in any given time slot) is assumed to be K. Multiplexing and demultiplexing are also assumed. An optimal time slot assignment algorithm to minimize the total transmission time for any given traffic demand matrix is proposed and analyzed. Other system configurations of interest are also discussed