ECPE 6504: Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing

Individual Project Report

An In-Depth Design Guide to Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) over Satellite

Communication Networks

Srihari Raghavan
(sraghava@vt.edu)
24 APR 2000
 This paper discusses in depth the issues in using satellite links as the physical
media for ATM internetworking and uses it to build a design guide for implementation of
ATM over satellite networks. The challenge here is to provide ATM, a connection-
oriented protocol developed specifically for a reliable high-bandwidth wired
infrastructure, along with its QoS guarantees, for mobile networks, which are
characterized by frequent breaks and makes of connections over a shared, unreliable
and limited-bandwidth wireless medium. A successful implementation of ATM inter-
networks depends upon the Bit Error Rate (BER) of the underlying physical layer. ATM
was originally designed for links with low BER like fiber. In the case of satellite links, the
error rate is orders of magnitude higher. The bursty nature of the error in satellite links
also poses a big problem. This paper will systematically deal with such major issues of
Satellite ATMs (SATATM) and their implementation. A set of motivation examples or
scenarios for SATATM networks will be discussed. This will be used to compile a host of
design issues and the various options available for the same and hence can be used as
a theoretical design guide for future ATM over satellite implementations.

The paper is arranged as follows. After a brief introduction to ATM, Satellite

communications and Wireless ATM (WATM), motivating network architectures, which
has a great diversity of requirements, are presented. The need for SATATMs in those
particular situations is emphasized. After this, requirements for SATATMs like handoff
(inter-satellite, inter-beam), error control mechanisms, architectural options, cost-
performance tradeoffs are discussed. The section following this would handle how
satellite communications should be optimized to provide other requirements and ATM
specific behaviors like service guarantees (ABR, CBR etc.,), congestion control, and
AAL issues. The section also deals with routing in SATATMs, MAC protocols for satellite
communications, optimizations needed to use TCP over SATATMs and IPV6 over
SATATMs. All the above issues would be analyzed and correlated with the motivating
architectures given in the preceding sections. The section will also explain some
practical SATATM products available in the market and their features. The paper will end
with a section on conclusions, summarizing all the ideas presented and comments about
the whole concept of SATATMs. The conclusions section would summarize the ideas
presented and will present design solutions for the implementation of the motivation
scenarios and also will discuss related issues and tradeoffs for the solutions. The section
following the motivation scenario presents SATATM solutions for the scenarios. The
conclusion section justifies and endorses the same.

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Table of Contents
Pg. No
1. Introduction 4
1.1. Satellite Communications
1.1.1. Architecture and purpose
1.1.2. Terminology, characteristics, advantages and disadvantages

1.2. ATM and WATM 5

1.2.1. ATM architecture
1.2.2. ATM internals and physical layer issues
1.2.3. WATM and its features

2. Motivating Scenarios 7
2.1. Description of the architectures

3. SATATM details 10

4. SATATM design specifics 11

4.1. Constellation of the satellite
4.2. Handovers and re-routing
4.3. Presence of inter-satellite links
4.4. Presence of OBP/OBS
4.5. MAC layer protocols, scheduling and ATM services mapping for QoS
4.6. Power management
4.7. Error correction scenarios
4.8. Traffic control and congestion control
4.9. Upper layer considerations
4.9.1. TCP changes for ATM UBR
4.9.2. TCP changes for ATM ABR
4.9.3. TCP changes for satellite communications
4.9.4. IPV6 over ATM over satellite communications
4.10 Attenuation considerations
4.11 ATM layer changes for satellite considerations
4.12 Link budget scenario
4.13 Elevation angles
4.14 Cell transport methods
4.15 Encryption of traffic
4.16 Related Information
4.16.1 HALE systems
4.16.2 Commercial SATATM products (from COMSAT)
4.16.3 Focus on NASA-ACTS
4.16.4 Commercial satellite design guide
4.16.6 Rule-based practical design approach for building commercial satellites
4.16.7 VSAT terminals

5. Conclusions 29

6. References 31

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1. Introduction

1.1 Satellite Communications

1.1.1 Architecture and purpose

A communication satellite functions as an overhead wireless repeater station that

provides a microwave communication link between two geographically remote sites. Due
to its high altitude, satellite transmissions can cover a wide area over the surface of the
earth. Each satellite is equipped with various “transponders” consisting of a transceiver
and an antenna tuned to a certain part of the allocated spectrum. The incoming signal is
amplified and then rebroadcast on a different frequency. Most satellites simply broadcast
whatever they receive, and are referred to as “bent pipes”. The traditional applications
were TV broadcasts and voice telephony. Satellite communications for packet data
transmissions is being considered. The applications like mobile services, direct
broadcast, private networks and high-speed hybrid networks in which services would be
carried via integrated satellite-fiber networks are being considered [39].

Satellite links can operate in different frequency bands and use separate carrier
frequencies for the up-link and downlink. There are some common frequency bands.
They are listed in the table below.

Table 1: Frequency spectrum allocation for some common bands [1]

BAND UP-LINK (GHz) DOWN-LINK (GHz) ISSUES
C 4 (3.7-4.2) 6 (5.925-6.425) Interference with ground links
Ku 11 (11.7-12.2) 14 (14.0-14.5) Attenuation due to rain
Ka 20 (17.7-21.7) 30 (27.5-30.5) High Equipment cost
L/S 1.6 (1.610-1.625) 2.4 (2.483-2.500) Interference with ISM band

1.1.2 Terminology, characteristics, advantages and disadvantages

Satellites can be positioned in orbits with different heights and shapes. Based on
the orbital radius, satellites fall into one of the following categories. They are Low Earth
Orbit (LEO), Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) and Highly
Elliptic Orbit (HEO). The constellations are described below and their relative merits are
tabulated.

Fig.1 GEO, LEO, MEO and HEO (Left-Right) constellations [41]

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The comparisons table between the different constellations is given below. [41][1]

Table 2: Salient features of different satellite constellations

Type LEO MEO GEO HEO

6000-12000 Variable due to elliptical

Height 100-300 miles 22,282 miles
miles orbit
Time in
15 min 2-4 hrs 24 hrs Variable
LOS
Covers Maximizes time
Lower launch Moderate
42.2% of the spent over
costs, very short launch costs,
Merits earth’s populated areas,
round trip delays, small round trip
surface, superior line of sight,
small path loss delays.
constant view fewer satellites
Very large
Very short
Larger round trip
lifetime (1-3
delays, delays, Not a complete
Demerits months),
greater path expensive coverage.
encounters
loss Earth
radiation belts
Stations.

There are several merits to satellite communications as a whole as they can give
global coverage to remote areas not connected by terrestrial network, chance to act as
an alternate mode of communication in military applications and disaster recovery
scenarios, support for multipoint communications due to inherent broadcasting
capability, bandwidth on demand capabilities, ease of network expansion, flexibility of
station organization etc., There are also several demerits associated with satellite
communications such as their bursty error conditions, high BER characteristics, long
delay and the enormous cost associated with user terminals, earth stations and the
satellites as a whole. Also, the dependence of solar power for recharging also poses a
problem. The limited transmission power of both the ground terminals and satellite is
also a problem.

1.2 Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and Wireless ATM (WATM)

1.2.1 ATM Architecture

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is an International Telecommunication

Union- Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) standard for cell relay
wherein information for multiple service types, such as voice, video, or data, is conveyed
in small, fixed-size cells. ATM networks are connection oriented. It is a cell-switching and
multiplexing technology that combines the benefits of circuit switching (guaranteed
capacity and constant transmission delay) with those of packet switching (flexibility and
efficiency for intermittent traffic). It provides scalable bandwidth from a few megabits per
second (Mbps) to many gigabits per second (Gbps). Because of its asynchronous
nature, ATM is more efficient than synchronous technologies, such as time-division
multiplexing (TDM). With TDM, each user is assigned to a time slot, and no other station
can send in that time slot. If a station has a lot of data to send, it can send only when its
time slot comes up, even if all other time slots are empty. If, however, a station has

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nothing to transmit when its time slot comes up, the time slot is sent empty and is
wasted. Because ATM is asynchronous, time slots are available on demand with
information identifying the source of the transmission contained in the header of each
ATM cell.

ATM transfers information in fixed-size units called cells. Each cell consists of 53
octets, or bytes. The first 5 bytes contain cell-header information, and the remaining 48
contain the "payload" (user information). Small fixed-length cells are well suited to
transferring voice and video traffic because such traffic is intolerant of delays that result
from having to wait for a large data packet to download, among other things [42].

1.2.2 ATM internals and physical layer issues

An ATM network consists of set of ATM switches interconnected by point-to-point

ATM links and there are two interfaces or links. They are User Network Interface (UNI)
and Network-to-Network Interface (NNI). Then there are Virtual Connection Identifiers
(VCI) and Virtual Path Identifiers (VPI), which are used to identify the next destination of
a cell as it passes through a series of ATM switches to reach the ultimate destination.

There are certain interesting fields in ATM header like Congestion Loss Priority
(CLP) and a Header Error Control (HEC). The former will allow the ATM switch to drop
the cells with CLP set, when there is congestion at the switch. The latter is used for error
control. The ATM layers and the ATM Adaptation layer (AAL) are roughly analogous to
the data-link layer in the OSI model. The ATM layer is responsible for establishing
connections and passing cells through the ATM network. The AAL is used for isolating
higher-layer protocols from the details of the ATM layer. The higher layers residing
above AAL will accept user data, arrange it into packets and hand it to AAL [42]. There
are different AALs like AAL1, AAL3/4 and AAL5 for different types of data and voice and
video packets.

ATM connections can be point-to-point and point-to-multipoint. ATM supports

QoS guarantee composed of traffic contract, traffic shaping and traffic policing. The first
class called Constant Bit Rate (CBR) emulates fixed-bandwidth circuit switching. It has
Peak Cell Rate (PCR) as the traffic descriptor. Variable Bit Rate (VBR) allows
connections to share network resources and the traffic descriptors are PCR, Sustainable
Cell Rate (SCR) and Maximum Burst Size (MBS), The Available Bit Rate (ABR) is
dependent on the network flow control, which assigns it a value, called Allowed Cell
Rate (ACR), which is in-between traffic descriptors for this service like PCR and
Minimum Cell Rate (MCR). Unspecified Bit Rate (UBR) has no traffic descriptors and no
QoS guarantees.

ATM connection establishment process uses the one-pass method, just like the
telephone network. An ATM connection setup proceeds with a connection-signaling
request from source end system and connections are set up throughout the network,
allocating buffer spaces according to QoS guarantees and reaches the final destination,
which either accepts or rejects the connection request. On acceptance, data transfer can
begin. The teardown is also done in the similar way. ATM networks can emulate a
physical LAN. LAN Emulation (LANE) is a standard defined by the ATM forum to
emulate a LAN on top of an ATM network. It provides a service interface for higher-
layers that is identical to that of existing LANs.

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1.2.3 Wireless ATM (WATM) and its features

WATM is ATM with physical layer being wireless medium. This gives a host of
choices for the physical layer. The benefits of a wireless ATM access technology should
be observed by a user as improved service and improved accessibility. By preserving
the essential characteristics of ATM transmission, wireless ATM offers the promise of
improved performance and quality of service, not attainable by other wireless
communications systems like cellular systems, cordless networks or wireless LANs. In
addition, wireless ATM access provides location independence that removes a major
limiting factor in the use of computers and powerful telecom equipment over wired
networks. The architecture proposed for wireless ATM is composed of a large number of
small transmission cells called pico cells. A base station serves each pico cell. All the
base stations in the network are connected via the wired ATM network. The use of ATM
switching for intercellular traffic also avoids the crucial problem of developing a new
backbone network with sufficient throughput to support intercommunication among large
number of small cells. To avoid hard boundaries between pico-cells, the base stations
can operate on the same frequency.

2. Motivating Scenarios

There are different application scenarios, which are motivating factors behind
SATATM networks. The following sections deal with a set of architectures for which
SATATMs can provide a good quality solution. The scenarios are discussed and the
connectivity requirements are studied and then, SATATM concept will be applied to the
scenarios and its deployment requirements would be studied in the consequent sections.

2.1 Description of the scenarios

2.1.1 Geographically distributed computing

Geographically distributed computing allows more effective resource sharing and

improved utilization of computing resources. Major components of this scenario are
inter-process communication and remote file I/O systems [37]. The main factor involved
this scenario is the distance of separation between communicating nodes and ways to
resolve them. The other factor involved is the necessity of broadband communications
with QoS guarantees. Satellite communications can solve the distance factor and ATM
can solve the requirements of QoS guarantees. The other factors are a big
organization’s nature of having geographically dispersed supercomputers and
workstations in branch offices and the need to interconnect them. The pre-requisite is
the successful interconnection of terrestrial networks in a seamless way.

2.1.1.1 Requirements
The requirements here are QoS guarantee, fast user response, stable
connections, reachability etc.,

2.1.2 Mobility architecture in ATM and WATM networks

In ATM networks, there are different scenarios based on interconnection of ATM

networks (which may be mobile) between themselves and the need to interconnect ATM
end nodes, which may be geographically distributed. This motivation is on the basis of
the following scenarios.

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 • High-speed network access by ATM end-nodes, which may be portable (hence
mobile).
• A class of applications, with respect to WATM deals with the mobility of the ATM
switch itself. Here pieces of ATM network, each consisting of ATM switches,
could be in motion with respect to the fixed portion of the network. Application
scenarios would involve mobile platforms with number of users on board. This
scenario is pertinent to airplanes, which provides communication and
entertainment services to passengers. Here the ATM end nodes are not in
motion. Another scenario could be that ships (military and civil) having ATM
networks want to communicate among them and with the land network. The
military networks would also entail security features for intruder-free
communication.

2.1.2.1 Requirements
The requirements here are maintaining quality connections, safeguard QoS
guarantees, smooth handoffs, secure communications etc.,

2.1.3 Distance learning and next-generation education

Distance learning and computer aided instructions are very important and could be
• Broadcast type communications characterized by one-way information flow
• Interactive communications characterized by full-duplex information flow and
• Self-learning, in which students can retrieve learning materials remotely [28].
These scenarios require multimedia communications of very high quality and the main
hindrance is the distance factor. Institutions in the developed countries can educate
people in developing and under-developed countries if quality multimedia connection is
achieved over a large distance. ATM is the de-facto standard for multimedia
communications due to its capacity to guarantee QoS and support for voice, video and
data simultaneously.

2.1.3.1 Requirements
The main requirements are QoS guarantees, voice-video synchronization, large
bandwidth, bandwidth on demand, quality multimedia services etc.,

2.1.4 Multimedia and multi-service applications

Multimedia applications like video-conferencing and multi-service applications

(interconnection of circuit-switched and packet-switched networks) scenarios are classic
examples of bandwidth guarantees and bandwidth on demand scenarios respectively.
They also require synchronization over a great distance. By default, distance is a factor
in these application scenarios. Multimedia communications is also driven by the
backbone concept, assumed to be provided by fiber cables. In many parts, these may be
unviable, uneconomic or take too long to establish. Multi-service communications also
entail interconnection of the mobile devices carried by company representatives.

2.1.4.1 Requirements
QoS guarantees, bandwidth on demand, large bandwidth, synchronization, and
backbone dependability are demanded by multimedia applications. Seamless and
efficient integration schemes are needed by multi-service applications. Interactive

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computing and bulk transfers with high bandwidth requirements, information
dissemination including stock market data etc., and video broadcasts with low delay
requirements are some other multimedia applications to be taken care of [26].

2.1.5 Secure broadband communications

Secure communications are needed by military and sometimes, for big

companies, financial institutions and banks, having distributed branches. The main factor
is that secure communications are needed over a geographically separated scenario in
which distance is the main consideration.

2.1.5.1 Requirements
Security, encryption and interconnection between geographically diverse locations are
the main issues here.

2.1.6. Applicability of SATATM

SATATMs are most suitable in all the above scenarios because

• Satellites can eliminate the distance factor.
• ATM is the industry choice for QoS guarantees and multimedia
communications.
• Satellites can provide reachability. Satellites can provide reachability in cases
where geographical complexity precludes terrestrial network and in cases
where the terrestrial network is made unusable due to natural or artificial
disasters.
• In the past, fast user response may not be possible with SATATMs due to the
inherent propagation delay associated with satellite communications.
Recently, gigabit satellite networks made possible using NASA’s Advanced
Communication Technology Satellite (ACTS) [12][18].
• Satellites can provide bandwidth on demand and provide error-tolerant
connections [9,13,15, 18,19,24,30,45].
• They can also do encrypted communications [35].
• Satellite communications can also guarantee QoS to all the service
categories of ATM like CBR, VBR etc [10,14,30,43,44]. Connection
Admission Control (CAC) mechanisms have been devised for SATATMs [38].
• They can also provide multi-service on demand [21].
• There are handover protocols being devised for smooth handoffs and have
been found to be effective [11].
Taking into consideration, all the above factors, SATATMs can be taken as the preferred
choice for the above scenarios. The following sections will show how SATATM satisfies
the above requirements. SATATMs can be used in similar scenarios, which exhibit or
need QoS guarantees and high bandwidth requirements in the face of distance, being
the overriding concern.
There are many issues to be addressed before SATATMs can be chosen as the
preferred solution. These are discussed in the next section. Particularly, there is a great
number of SATATM solutions and architectures available and these should be chosen
carefully to particular application scenarios for optimum performance and meeting of
requirements. These are addressed in the following sections. The paper proceeds by a

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discussion of a generic architecture and issues behind SATATMs and a design guide in
the following sections.

3. Satellite ATM details

In order to explain the SATATM network details and other issues, the following model
will be considered.

Fig.2 Generic Satellite network model and its related issues

Modern satellites have Inter-Satellite Links (ISL), On Board Switching/Processing

(OBS/OBP), data buffering and signal processing. They solve the main stumbling point
for universal access for data services, namely distance. They are often equipped with
multiple transponders. The area of the earth’s surface covered by a satellite’s
transmission beam is referred to as the “footprint” of the satellite transponders. The up-
link is highly directional, point to point link using a high gain dish antenna at the ground
station. The down-link can have a large footprint providing coverage for a substantial
area or a “spot beam” can be used to focus high power on a small region, thus requiring
cheaper and smaller ground stations. Some satellites can dynamically change their
coverage area [40]. The main aspects of the satellite network with respect to Fig.2 are:
• Network management – in the multipoint implementation, a network control
center (NCC) is responsible for monitoring, controlling the synchronization of all
terrestrial stations. It is also responsible for performance management,
configuration management, resource planning and billing [10].
• Traffic reconfiguration – routing and traffic rate belong to this category.
Bandwidth (BW) allocation scheme is necessary to maintain the appropriate QoS
guarantee of any network and especially ATM network.
• Data Transmission – it requires usually very high link integrity. ARQ methods are
used on the uplink channel, which is multi-access channel with multiple users
aiming to access the network and downlink, which is a multicast channel.

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 • Burst Time Plan – A BTP is required to
o Set up space segment (consisting of satellites) based on the previous
negotiation with the network users
o Provide additional BW if a specific service asks for it
o Incorporate new activated users to the network
• Burst synchronization – with the high rate digital transmission used in the satellite
link, this is needed. The satellite movement will affect the delay and loss of
synchronization will lead to serious degradation. Guard times are used for this
purpose.
• With respect to the figure, s1, s2 and s3 are three positions (at different times) of
the same ship, s. The ships with networks (could be ATM) onboard represents a
mobile network and is shown in different positions so that, they are in different
spot-beams of the same satellite (s1 and s2), necessitating inter-beam
handovers and between different satellite footprints (necessitating inter-satellite
handovers).
• OBS and OBP represent onboard switching and onboard processing capable
satellites and will be described in detail in the later sections.

4. SATATM design specifics

The design of SATATM networks will require a number of design issues and related
parameters to be considered and analyzed. It is done in the following sections. The
following sections are organized as follows. The design parameters would be given and
would be discussed and the advances in each of the parameters would be discussed
and then a design guide would be provided based on these.

4.1 Constellation of the satellite

The orbital radius of the satellite greatly affects its capabilities and design. The
following diagram shows the effects of the constellations for GEO and LEO
constellations.

Fig.3 Some of the effects of GEO and LEO constellations

Table 2 should be referred for more information or design decisions about the different
constellations. Fig.3 shows the effects of LEO and GEO constellations on parameters
like Coverage, Received signal strength etc., These could be used to select the
constellation. There are many simulation models based on LEO constellation. An

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important measure of efficiency that affects SATATM is end-to-end delay. A model uses
Number of orbit planes, Number of satellites per orbit plane, Satellite altitude, Orbit plane
inclination angle and Ground terminal coordinates to calculate the total propagation
delay from a source to destination through a LEO network. The end-to-end delay is the
sum of transmission delay, uplink delay, downlink delay, ISL propagation delay,
OBS/OBP delay and buffering delay. The propagation delay is characterized by downlink
delay, uplink delay and ISL propagation delay. In this model, delay variation caused by
orbital dynamics, buffering, adaptive routing and OBP are not taken into account. LEO
propagation delay is of the order of 83.45 ms for a sample propagation delay calculation
from Los Angeles to London with seven satellites in path [10]. GEO propagation delay
for ground terminals farther away from the equator is of the order of 275ms through a
single satellite.
Though LEO networks have relatively smaller propagation delays, the delay
variance is higher than GEO. This variation is due to handovers, satellite motion, OBS
and adaptive routing. These should be considered while selecting the constellation.
Thus, when considering constellation of a satellite, the parameters to be taken
into account are launching cost (less for LEO), propagation delay (less for LEO), delay
variance (more for LEO, hence bad), coverage (more for GEO, change continuously for
LEO), altitude (low for LEO and hence small end-end delays, low power requirements)
etc.,

4.2 Handovers and re-routing

The orbital revolution of satellites causes satellites to change position with respect to
ground terminals. As a result, the Network Control Center (NCC) in fig.2 must handover
connections to another satellite whose footprint is relevant. In other cases, LEO
systems are not stationary. Hence, caller and called terminals do not remain in the same
footprint of the initial source and initial destination satellites. Thus the satellites need to
transfer the ground caller and called terminals to others. This is called a handover. There
are intra-orbit and inter-orbit handovers. GEO systems do not have too many handovers
due to its large distance from Earth and due to its high coverage area. Handovers for
LEO satellites are estimated to occur on an average 8 to 11 minutes [10]. There is an
amount of delay variance in LEO constellation due to these handovers. There are
different handover protocols being considered and Footprint Handover Rerouting
Protocol (FHRP) is one of them [11]. LEO systems with multi-hop inter-satellite links
need handover and rerouting protocols. This protocol has the following advantages [11].
• Maintains optimality of initial route even after satellite handovers
• Handles the inter-orbit handover problem
• Demands easy processing, signaling and storage costs
• Maintains cell order upon delivery for ATM
• Relative performance of FHRP is not affected by heterogeneous traffic pattern.
Possible after effects of handovers are listed below.
• A new satellite may be added to existing connection route
• The existing connection route should be updated
• A new route/connection must be set up.
Addition of a new node could cause sub-optimal route and hence re-routing is
necessary. This causes additional signaling and processing overhead. The assumption
of FHRP is that all handovers are caused by the mobility of the LEO satellite instead of
the ground terminal. Previous algorithms considered only intra-orbit handovers or inter-

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orbit handovers without multi-hop handover or handover re-routing problem. This
algorithm improves upon them.

4.3 Presence of Inter-satellite links

Inter-satellite links are links between satellites, which form a sub-network in

space. A major benefit of a developed ISL network is transporting long distance traffic
over reliable and high capacity connections and with minimal terrestrial resources. Older
satellite networks did not employ ISLs. Modern satellites employ ISLs due to the
advancement in OBS/OBP designs. Another motivation is that, since ATM switching
implies low delay at each satellite node on the ISL route, the advantage gained from low
propagation delay on the LEO/MEO up and downlink can be retained [16].
This algorithm uses a virtual topology approach and the search for available end-
to-end routes is done within the ISL network by means of a modified Dijkstra’s SPF
algorithm, capable of coping with time-variant topology. ISL routing deals only with
deterministic and periodic orbits and hence is predictable. Hence the presence of ISLs is
justified.
The inter-satellite link is also a part of propagation delay. ISLs may be in-plane or
cross-plane links. In-plane links connect satellites within the same orbit plane and cross-
plane links connect satellites in different orbit planes. In GEO systems, ISL delays can
be assumed to be constant, while in LEO systems ISL delays depend on the orbital
radius, the number of satellites-per-orbit and inter-orbital distance. The ISL delay in LEO
systems change frequently due to satellite movement and adaptive routing techniques.
Thus LEO systems can exhibit a high variation in ISL delay [10]. There are some
improvements needed to this routing protocol as suggested in [16] and should be
consulted before usage.
Hence, the usage of ISLs is very much in vogue and recommended and routing
strategies to minimize average number of route changes without increase in path delay
should be considered before usage. The jitter due to ISLs is also reduced by usage of
the routing protocol. Following is a sample of ISL delay for a GEO satellite constellation.

Table 3 : GEO Inter Satellite Link Delays

Number of Inter-Satellite Inter-Satellite Link

Satellites (N) LinkDistance (km) Delay (ms)

3 73,030 243

4 59,629 199

5 49,567 165

12 21,826 73

There are also millimeter-wave inter-satellite links and optical inter-satellite links [31].
The link budgets of these ISLs are also given.

4.4 Presence of OBP/OBS

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Traditionally, the satellites have always been used as “bent pipes” with no other
processing at the satellite, except for reflecting transmitted waves. The alternative is to
allow on board switching and processing. The requirement for satellite switching results
from the need of small, inexpensive earth terminals. This could be supplied by multiple
beams [33]. However, multiple beams need switching between beams or inter-beam
switching and hence satellite switching must be considered. Satellites with no OBS limits
the applicability of satellites for internetworking to simply links connecting two terrestrial
stations. With OBS, earth terminals with differing QoS requirements can share the uplink
channel.

There are on-board switching architectures that implement the adaptation of real-time
and non-real time services to the satellite communication link, while achieving significant
statistical advantage on communication links, uplinks and downlinks [14]. This model is
based on the GEO constellation. It exploits the burstiness of real-time traffic, this
architecture achieves high system throughput. In this particular architecture the onboard
switch does demodulation, detection and correction of transmission errors, after
receiving the signal and time-multiplexed into digital baseband streams. For this
particular scheme, the traffic is divided into two types. The CBR and rt-VBR traffic
belong to one high priority category and the nrt-VBR, UBR and ABR class traffic belong
to the second low priority category. The switch architecture includes
• Input de-multiplexer for separation of the high and low priority traffic
• A packet switch to route these traffic
• Output queuing packet switch, producing one queue per downlink satellite RF
carrier, allowing for doing congestion control on the low-priority traffic.
• Output interleavers, which insert low-priority cells into unused high-priority
spaces.
Thus, the high-priority traffic is handled according to a circuit emulation mode whereas
an ATM-like packet switch handles the low-priority traffic. The main advantages brought
about by OBP are [14]
• Significant increase in system throughput
• Offered a natural flexibility of a packet-oriented transfer mode
• Achieves true packet switching and statistical advantages for large capacity ATM
networks
• Achieves the required data rates with multimedia traffic from small terminals,
together with meshed networking. Regenerative switching and multi-beam
onboard processing payload satellites can achieve this.
• The inherent broadcast function. Every subscriber located within the same
downlink spot beam as the called subscriber can, receive a message forwarded
to this user station. The normal mode of operation is user specific. An extension
of the broadcast nature along with return link provides the necessary interactivity
required by multimedia services [31].
• Flexibility of the switch to act both in circuit-switched and packet switched modes.
• The large capacity achieved.
• Improved connectivity
• Processing gain, coding gain and optimized link designs[3].

Hence the use of OBP/OBS is very much recommended and the issues to be
addressed, before the selection of OBP/OBS are
• Space environment considerations and associated delays (e.g., GEO systems)

14
 • Satellite limitations like long transmission delay, link noise, local weather
conditions and interference.
• Cost of operation of satellite and launch costs. The costs associated with
launching satellites with OBS/OBP are high compared to that of bent pipe
satellites.
• Lifetime of the satellite. Generally the satellites last for an average of ten years.
• Onboard buffer size. This is a very important issue, since the real estate or
memory requirements onboard the satellite are scarce and hence the buffer size
should be carefully chosen. Simulation studies for different types of ATM traffic
are done and should be used [14] before choosing the value for this parameter.
• Capacity and port rate are other important parameters in addition to
implementation considerations. These are addressed in [33].
• While terrestrial switches should be modular to cater to a broad range of
capacities, OBS could be a lot simpler and tailored to satellite communications.
• Due to restrictions on payload size and costs, there should be distribution of
ATM-layer functions between onboard switch, NCC and ground terminals.
• Due to restricted lifetime of satellites, fault tolerance should be added by
introducing fault detection and redundancy, both internal and external to the
switch [33].
• Because of switching delay in the satellites and also to prevent retransmissions
in a long-delay path, the onboard buffers should be larger than the terrestrial
switches to limit onboard congestion.
• Due to hostile radiation environment, particularly in GEO constellations, the
switch ASICs and memory chips for buffers should be suitably safeguarded. The
rad-hard technology is advised [33].
• Switch architectures with a large number of components may be unsuitable due
to satellite limitations in terms of size, mass and power.
• Power consumption and power dissipation are other significant factors to be
considered.
• CLRs should be in the range of 10^-10 to meet the QoS of high-performance
traffic and avoid costly retransmissions [33].
• To get good throughput/delay performance, output or shared queuing should be
used. The output queuing mechanism could be physical buffer based or virtual
buffer based. There are issues in choosing fully output buffered switch. After
sorting through the issues, a fully interconnected fabric with output port
concentrators similar to the knockout switch is being proposed. The high CLR of
these types of switches should also be taken into consideration [33].
• Functions that could be considered for OBS/OBP are switching, queuing, flow
control and scheduling. Connection admission control and resource allocation
should be handled at NCC preferably. All delay-tolerant functions should be kept
on the ground.

4.5 MAC layer protocols, scheduling and ATM services mapping for QoS

The key difference between a SATATM network and the terrestrial network is the fact
that the SATATM network uses multiple access in the uplink. The choice of multiple
access schemes has a great impact on the SATATM network. The primary goal in the
assignment process is
• Satisfy the user’s QoS in the form of maximum cell transfer delay (maxCTD),
peak cell delay variation (peakCDV) and cell loss rate (CLR).

15
 • Maximize the utilization of the uplink
• Cell delivery in a timely manner and with minimal collisions [26].
Satellite networks present unique challenges in system design related to QoS
provisioning. MAC protocols are behind the delivery of QoS contract. MAC protocol
should achieve QoS provisioning, efficiency and service interoperability [26].

Satellite environments affect MAC protocols with the long propagation delay, physical
changes to the controllers in space, dynamic nature of satellite links and limited buffer
memory.

The traditional CSMA/CD schemes cannot be used with satellite channels, since it is not
possible for earth stations to do carrier sense on the up-link due to the point-to-point
nature of the link. A carrier sense at the downlink informs the earth stations about
potential collisions that may have occurred 270ms ago. Such delays are not practical [1].
Most SATATM schemes use dedicated channels in time and/or frequency for each user.
ALOHA, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA), Time Division Multiple Access
(TDMA) and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) are such schemes. The ability to
use OBP and multiple spot beams will enable future satellite to reuse the frequencies
many times more than today’s system. Demand Assigned Multiple Access (DAMA)
systems allow the number of channels at any time is less than the number of potential
users. Satellite connections are established or dropped only when traffic demands them.
Protocols like Packet Reservation Multiple Access (PRMA), an improved form of TDMA
with techniques from S-ALOHA, could also be used. Its application will depend on
• Round trip delay (higher is bad for PRMA)
• Application and required QoS
• BER of link (high BER is bad) [1]

CDMA is another preferred method. It uses a type of spread spectrum communication

and its inherent advantages like distributed coordination, chipping code method of
authentication, high security and reuse of same frequencies has made it a good method
to use for satellite communications. The main disadvantage is the increase in BER with
the increase in the number of users.

MF-TDMA is another protocol for consideration. MF-TDMA is a

• Preamble-less TDMA.
• It gives bandwidth-on-demand capacity allocation and saves uplink transmission
power.
• MF-TDMA is divided into two areas, each of which has fixed-size slots. The
signaling and synchronization area allow the terminal to request and receive the
timing information necessary for its synchronization, as well as the sending of
ATM and satellite signaling for connection establishment and initial entry. The
data area of the uplink frame is where ATM cells are transmitted. The slots can
also hold Forward Error Correction (FEC) and in-band signaling. The ATM cell
payload capacity on each frequency in the data area is 2Mbps [8].
MF-TDMA is the preferred MAC protocol for some commercial SATATM products.
There are five specific uplink access schemes [8,25] to support the connections and they
are
• Random Access
• Fixed Assignment
• Fixed-rate demand assignment

16
 • Variable-rate demand assignment and
• Free assignment.
• Adaptive protocols
• Hybrid protocols

The merits of these schemes are discussed in [46]. When a cell arrives at a queue,
signaling messages are sent to the satellite notifying it of its arrival. When the satellite
receives this information, it dynamically assigns slots to the connection. The drawback is
the delay for the signaling message sent to the satellite. Thus there is a minimum delay
(~0.5s) to be taken into consideration, irrespective of the other conditions. On the
downlink, transmission is multicast and the suitable protocol is Time Division
Multiplexing (TDM). In order to achieve a greater efficiency in SATATM networks, the
DAMA scheme can be employed with other access schemes like MF-TDMA and SCPC
[30].
3.5.1 Design considerations

There are design considerations based on the mode of usage of satellites and the
resulting source traffic at the satellite network level [26]. The following diagram shows
two satellite system network scenarios [26], which can help decide which MAC protocol
would be better for different scenario.

Fig.4 Satellite network scenarios based on traffic aggregation

Demand Assigned Multiple Access MAC protocol can be used, when

• Burstiness of traffic is high
• Low bit-rates are to be supported
• BW conservation
• Delay requirements not critical.
Based on the above diagram, DAMA can be readily applied to the wireless cell scenario
and not for the Internet backbone case. For this case, fixed bandwidth allocation could
be used. There are different DAMA techniques in use and research has been done on
the various DAMA protocols [26]. The most preferred mode of usage of DAMA is for
nrtVBR, whose requirements is low packet loss and for ABR, DAMA and hybrids of AMA
are attractive solutions [26].

17
An in depth study on MAC protocols for Mars Regional Network [47] could be consulted
for more information. In another extensive study [25], a set of performance objectives
are identified and different MAC protocols are analyzed. The performance objectives are
• High channel throughput
• Low transmission delay
• Channel stability
• Protocol scalability
• Channel reconfigurability
• Broadband applicability
• Low Complexity
Following tables from [25] should be used to differentiate among the plethora of MAC
protocols.
Table 4: Relation between traffic models and MAC choices
Traffic Model MAC class choice
Non-bursty traffic Fixed Assignment
Bursty traffic Random access
Bursty traffic, long messages, large Reservation protocols with contention
number of users
Bursty traffic, long messages, small Reservation protocols with fixed
number of users TDMA reservation channel.

Table 5: Performance comparison

Protocol Average Mean Stability Scalability Recon- B’band Cost-
th’put delay figur- apps Comp-
ability lexity
Fixed
assignment
B-TDMA Low Low/Med Med/High No No Yes Med
G-TDMA High Low High No No Yes Med
Demand
Assignment
MSAP Med/high Med/high Med/high No No Yes Med-high
Random
Access
S-Aloha Low Very Low Yes Yes No Low
Low
Reservation
R-Aloha High Very Med Yes Yes No Low
Low
Hybrid
Aloha-R High Low-Med Med Yes Yes Yes Med
RRR High Low-Med Med Yes Yes Yes Med
Adaptive
SRUC High VeryLow High Yes Yes Yes High
MDMA High Low-Med Low Yes Yes No High

Here, Mini-Slotted Alternating Priorities Protocols (MSAP), Slotted-Aloha (S-Aloha),

Round Robin Reservation (RRR) protocol, Split Reservation Upon Collision (SRUC),

18
Minimum Delay Multi-Access protocol, Generalized TDMA are being used. Interested
readers are referred to [3, 25] for further information on these protocols and other
variations of the same. Some of the conclusions are that the hybrid protocols that take
advantage of both random access and reservation protocols have better throughput
versus delay characteristics. The basic assumptions behind the study are bursty traffic
and asymmetric satellite links.

Another study [7] on MAC protocols compares them in a different plane and is given
below.
Table 6: Performance comparison
Access Efficiency Delay Stability Robustness Complexity
protocol
S-ALOHA .37 Low Low High Low
Tree CRA .43-.49 Medium Medium Poor Medium
DAMA .6-.8 High High High Medium
(reservation)
Hybrid 0.6-0.8 Variable Medium High medium
(reservation-
random)

Here Tree Contention Resolution Access (Tree CRA) and others are being used.

3.5.2 MAC on the uplink for ATM traffic – a case study

Medium access protocols on the uplink for ATM traffic should be made suitable for
different kinds of ATM data connections and service classes. A sample assignment
scheme is discussed in [8]. The concentration is on CBR and VBR traffic. This scheme
assumes Multiple Frequency-TDMA (MF-TDMA) as the MAC protocol.

The following tables and explanation gives the overview of a sample assignment
strategy for ATM traffic [8]. Let Aii cells/frame be the bandwidth (BW) allocated for fixed-
rate demand assignment to connection ‘ii’ in a particular uplink beam. Let Bii cells/frame
be the same connection’s variable-rate demand assignment allocation. Let Cii be the
total BW allocated for connection ‘ii’. The terms PCR refers to Peak Cell Rate, MCR to
Minimum Cell Rate and SCR refers to Sustained Cell Rate.

Table 7: Resource allocation for ATM service classes [8]

ATM class Cii Aii Bii

CBR PCR PCR -

VBR SCR to PCR QoS dependent QoS dependent

ABR MCR to PCR - MCR to PCR

UBR 0 - -

19
Statistical multiplexing is one of the key benefits of ATM. The most common method of
exploiting stat-mux is to merge multiple VBR streams with similar statistical properties
into a common FIFO queue, which may be given some constant rate of service. These
could be intra-terminal statistical multiplexing or inter-terminal statistical multiplexing.
These also could be taken care of in satellite framing [8]. There is a Hierarchical Round
Robin scheduler discussed in [8] which can schedule the uplink access. The advantages
reported are its simplicity, fine BW granularity and avoidance or large delay jitter. The
main pre-condition is the presence of OBS/OBP in the satellite.

In another study [44], some simple rules for ABR service on SATATM networks were
found and studied. This relates to the count of missing resource management cells
(Crm) parameter of the ABR source behavior. Based on the study, the size of the
Transient Buffer Exposure (TBE) parameter was set to 24 bits, and no size was enforced
for the Crm parameter. According to the study, this simple change improved the
throughput over OC-3 satellite links from 45Mbps to 140 Mbps. It was also found that
large values are needed for Crm parameter for long delay links or high-speed links.

3.6. Power management

One of the major challenges in the design of a satellite network is the limited
transmission power of both the ground terminals and the satellite. Transmissions in the
network should be such that the user terminals at different geographical areas are given
access in the most power efficient manner [8]. Multi-beam satellites are proposed for
this. Multi-beam systems need OBS/OBP. Hence when doing power management, the
issues regarding OBP/OBS should also be taken into consideration. To further save on
uplink transmission power, MAC protocols like MF-TDMA can be used as the data-link
protocol.

4.7 Error Correction Scenarios

In satellite channels under consideration, transmission bit errors occur in bursts due to
link attenuation and use of convolution coding to compensate for channel noise.
Because ATM was designed to be robust with respect to bit errors randomly distributed,
burst errors introduce cell loss (CL). For a BER of 10^-7, the CL ratio can be as high as
10^-6. Though AAL5 has a 32-bit CRC, it is not used due to the high cell discard rate at
the physical level [30]. There are several schemes for error correction like
• Interleaving mechanism
• Error recovery algorithms
• And efficient coding schemes, for improving error performance.

It has been shown that when interleaving is done, the ATM cell discard probability (CDP)
and probability of undetected errors are less. Interleaving the ATM cell tends to
“distribute” or spread the bit errors at the cost of increased delay. The interleaving
algorithm can be applied differently according to the AAL types. There is a chance that
errors can occur in the interleaved cells. Another problem is that the interleaving depth
for optimal error performance is still not evident [30].
Error recovery algorithms like automatic repeat request (ARQ) could be used to lower
error ratio for loss-sensitive, delay-insensitive scenarios. There are stop-and-wait, Go-
Back-N and Selective-repeat algorithms. See [40] for more details in error recovery
algorithms. Go-Back-N and Selective-repeat are better than stop-and-wait algorithms.
Coding scheme can be used for error correction or prevention. Currently, convolution
code with viterbi decoding is used to achieve 10^-3 to 10^5 BER [30]. This is not fit for
SATATM networks because of the loss-sensitive ATM traffic. Hence concatenated

20
coding with outer coding as Reed-Solomon (RS) coding with Forward Error Correction
(FEC) as the internal convolution code is being currently used and is a good performer in
this area [30]. Here also, optimal interleaving depth for SATATM networks should still be
determined.
An in-depth study of the impact of transmission error characteristics on SATATMs is
studied in [18]. The ATM cell performance measures are Cell acquisition time (CAT),
Cell in-synch time (CIT) and cell discard probability (CDP). Satellite links that operate at
high rates employ error correction schemes for providing acceptable BER. Burst errors
are generated by these error correction schemes. The ATM HEC is capable of correcting
only single-bit errors. A method called ATM link enhancement (ALE) was developed,
which incorporates a selective interleaving technique allowing it to be transparently
introduced into the satellite link. More information is given in the section under
Commercial SATATM Products in this paper. Studies confirming its validity are shown in
[18]. AAL1 uses a 3-bit CRC, AAL3/4 uses a 10-bit CRC and AAL5 uses 32-bit CRC for
error detection and error correction. All the codes used for AALs are sensitive to burst
errors, hence the need for better error control algorithms.

In a related experiment [47], an error correction scheme using side information is

proposed to improve the throughput of ATM transmission over Rayleigh fading channel
like a satellite link using binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation. The method
combines the ARQ protocol and the error correction scheme with side information (a bit-
marking technique is employed to get an idea of erroneous bits) to improve the
throughput.

In another experiment [24], a shorter error correction model called Bose-Chaudhuri-

Hocquenghem (BCH) code could be used. A more ATM oriented solution is also
discussed, which is called the Partial Packet Discard (PPD), which on detection of
erroneous cells at the satellite switch, these and consecutive ones are dropped and
hence reduce the traffic. This suffers from the retransmission problems (increase in
congestion) due to obvious reasons. The study goes on to explain implementations for
the different AAL layers for ATM. A comparison of PPD approach with a LLC layer
mechanism is also carried out.

In another related study [9], a solution is proposed for the error control mechanisms to
adapt to the satellite channel by moving the error recovery and detection to a higher
layer of the ATM. This is based on the ability of the ATM to determine the service of the
retransmission and to base recovery on that service. The study also shows simulation
results to confirm a significant increase in raw data throughput and that in ATM transfer
efficiency 7.5%. The results also show that it is possible to guarantee data services with
no loss of data under certain conditions. The author does this by changing the current
ATM adaptation layer with a proposed Convergence sub-layer AAL. It is also proposed
that differentiation based on the service during recovery and re-transmissions is
necessary.

The relation between BER and CLR has been studied and documented in [15]. The
CLR-vs-BER performance is quite linear. The effects and graphs are to be studied
before implementation.

4.8 Traffic Control and Congestion Control

21
Traffic Control is a measure that takes actions to avoid congestion conditions.
Congestion control acts after congestion is set. Traffic Control is congestion avoidance.
This is very important, since the satellite links are bandwidth limited [30]. The algorithms
should act faster and more efficiently due to the long delay. The basic QoS parameters
are Cell Loss Ratio (CLR), maximum and mean cell transfer delay (CTD) and cell delay
variation (CDV) and the extended QoS parameters are cell error ratio (CER), severely
errored cell block ratio (SECBR) and cell mis-insertion ratio (CMR) are also
recommended. The impact of satellite delay on some basic services is tabulated
here[30].
Table 8: Effect of satellite link delay on applications
Application and properties Sensitivity to satellite link delay
Video and voice service- generates Very sensitive- real time services, good
bursty traffic. as long as delay variation is kept very
small
Text or data service – needs reliability Not sensitive
Video telephony Not sensitive, future video telephony
may be sensitive
Computer Supported Cooperative Work Not sensitive, but delay on TCP/IP due
(CSCW) to satellite delay degrades entire
performance. [see section on Upper
Layer Concerns in this paper]

ITU-T and ATM Forum have specified traffic control functions, which manage and control
traffic to avoid congestion in ATM networks. These functions should be considered.
There are different traffic control procedures described. They are
• Traffic Shaping
o Mechanism to change the traffic characteristics of a cell stream to
achieve desired characteristics
o Should maintain call sequence integrity
o Are peak cell rate reduction, burst length limiting and CDV reduction
o Cannot be used when network is congested
• Priority control and selective cell discard mechanism
o CLP bit is manipulated as a means of traffic control to discard the ATM
cells with lower priority.
o Not efficient in ensuring data delivery
o Can aggravate congestion due to retransmissions
• Connection admission control (CAC)
o For occasional congestion
o Is the set of actions taken by a network to establish whether an ATM
connection can be accepted or rejected
o Useful only in the call-setup phase for SATATM networks.

Congestion control mechanisms are of many types [30]. A frequently used scheme is
selective cell discard. It has advantages and disadvantages as briefed above. Another
method is Explicit Forward Congestion Indication (EFCI) incorporated with a feedback
mechanism. EFCI is used to convey congestion notification to the source. The
destination protocol is required to notify the source of congestion. This whole process is
Forward Explicit Congestion Notification (FECN). In SATATM, this is not very well
matched due to the minimum delay of one-way propagation for the notification.
Backward Explicit Congestion Notification (BECN) is a mechanism, which could be used

22
to send a notification in the reverse direction of the congested path. Buffering and VC
prioritization can also be used in congestion control. The satellite on-board buffer could
also be considered. This could introduce jitter, if not properly done. A related mechanism
is VC prioritization. Other congestion control mechanisms are discussed in [49], although
these should be changed for SATATM considerations. Thus the criteria of choosing the
algorithms should be that, these should not affect the delay-sensitive traffic for
SATATMs.

A study of a CAC scheme that exploits statistical multiplexing of radio resources in an

integrated ATM-satellite environment has been done [38]. The proposed CAC strategy
effectively exploits the satellite BW and provides QoS to both real-time and non-real-time
VBR sources, while permitting contemporary access to the resources to a great number
of users.

4.9 Upper layer concerns

There is a service specific convergence sub-layer (SSCS) in AAL. This SSCS is divided
into service co-ordination function (SSCF) and SSCOP. The service specific connection
oriented protocol (SSCOP) can run on all protocol stacks. Its main function is to provide
assured delivery of PDUs and use error-recovery procedures if necessary. The following
features [18] are very favorable to SATATM networks. They are the selective
retransmissions, nearly infinite window size definition capability, superior flow control,
optimized support for high-speed and long-delay networks and the protocol is designed
to be insensitive to network delay. SSCOP has been proposed by some people as a
possible replacement for TCP as a wide-area transport protocol, however some doubts
have been expressed as to its efficiency in the face of errors, congestion, variable
delays. A thorough investigation of SSCOP, including simulation to determine its
performance in terms of throughput etc., in a typical error/congestion/delay environment
should be carried out.

TCP is the de-facto standard for the Internet transport protocol. Considerations for using
TCP over ATM over satellite communications have been studied in sufficient depth
[5,6,7,20]. The considerations and findings are explained in this section. A thorough
study [7] gives the TCP performance and buffer requirements over the satellite-ATM-
UBR service and provides guidelines on improving TCP performance in such situations.

4.9.1 TCP changes for ATM UBR

The ATM UBR service category is expected to be used by a wide range of applications.
Buffer requirements increase with increasing delay-bandwidth product. The efficiency of
TCP over UBR is measured by
Efficiency = (Sum of TCP throughputs)/(Maximum possible TCP throughput
Fairness Index = (Σxi )^2 / (N * Σxi^2 )
Where xi = throughput of the ith TCP source and N = number of TCP sources.
The buffer requirements are as follows.
• For very small buffer sizes, the resulting TCP throughput suffers.
• TCP performance increases with increase in the buffer sizes
• TCP performance over UBR for sufficiently large buffer sizes is scaleable with
respect to the number of TCP sources.
• A buffer size of 0.5*RTT to 1*RTT is sufficient to provide over 98% throughput.

23
Fairness is high for a large number of sources. This shows that TCP sources with a
good per-VC buffer allocation policy like selective drop, can effectively share the BW.
Providing a guaranteed rate (GR) to UBR traffic has been discussed as a possible
candidate to improve TCP performance over UBR service. Guaranteed Frame Rate
(GFR) is also being discussed as an enhancement to the UBR category. For TCP over

4.9.2 TCP changes for ATM ABR

For this case, virtual source and virtual destination can be used to isolate long delay
segments from terrestrial segments [5], which help in efficiently sizing buffers in routers
and ATM switches. Therefore, terrestrial switches only need to have buffers proportional
to the BW-delay product. Employing feedback is also a mechanism for giving feedback
to the sources.

4.9.3 TCP changes for satellite communications

These issues are important and must be taken into consideration before choosing on a
Transport layer protocol. An RFC [20] published recently, does an in-depth study on
TCP over satellite communications and has come up with the following
recommendations and hence could be followed.

• Maximum window size remains a hindrance to the SATATM networks. An

increase in the window to 2 ^30 is being proposed [6]. Also, larger initial window
size has been recommended
• TCP for transactions could be used due to the lesser number of handshakes
• Slow start wastes network capacity and are also inefficient for transfers that are
shorter in size.
• To counter delayed ACK caused delay in the sender side to increase the window,
“byte counting” approach is being studied. Otherwise, delayed ACKs must be
used only after the slow start phase.
• The Fast Recovery method should take into account, information provided by
SACKs sent by the receiver.
• The Forward Acknowledgement algorithm was developed to improve TCP
congestion control during loss recovery.
• Explicit congestion notifications should be used
• Differentiating between congestion and corruption is a difficult problem for TCP.
Doing it would be of great use to TCP over SATATM networks. This is handled in
[20].
• During congestion avoidance, in the absence of loss, the TCP sender adds
approximately one segment to its congestion window during each RTT. This
leads to unfairness and hence fair queuing and TCP-friendly buffer management
in network routers is being considered.
• The use of multiple data connections for transferring a file in a SATATM network
impacts the network and should be used after careful review.
• Rate-based pacing (RBP) is being considered to counter the slow window
opening during slow-start and could be used.
• TCP header compression is a viable alternative for bandwidth-sensitive SAT
networks.

24
 • Sharing TCP state among similar connections could be used to overcome
limitations in the configuration of the initial state.
• In highly asymmetric networks like satellite links, a low-speed return link can
cause performance drop due to congestion in the acks returning to the sender.
Hence Ack Congestion Control (ACC) must be done.
• Ack filtering can be done in the previous case to limit the number of acks in the
return direction. This could be done taking into advantage, the cumulative
acknowledgement scheme of TCP.

These are some of the TCP improvements to be made for supporting satellite networks
in general and will apply to SATATMs as well.

4.9.4 IPv6 over ATM over satellite communications

IPV6 projects are being undertaken over ATM over satellite communications [49, 50, 51].
IPv6 will support hierarchical addressing, routing, Quality of Services, mobility, security,
multi-peer communications. IPv6 coupled to Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and
GEO/LEO satellites technologies is being investigated as a solution to meet the Air
Traffic Management and passenger’s applications requirements for Air-Air, Air-Ground
and Ground-Ground segments with multimedia high-bandwidth [50]. The issues related
to the management of the QoS over an aggregation of ATM and Satellite networks fall
into several general classes [51]

• how to map the Internet IntServ model to the ATM QoS model,
• how to make RSVP, the Internet signaling protocol, run over ATM and Satellite,
• how to handle the ATM VCs to be able to provide the requested QoS and to
optimize the network resources,
• how to aggregate IP flows,
• how to handle the many-to-many connectionless features of IPv6 and RSVP,
• how to map efficiently the routing algorithms with the switching mechanisms,
• how and when to use satellite to dynamically set up shortcut route between
nodes,
• which time-critical data should be routed over a satellite overlay network on top
of a terrestrial network,
• how to balance the load between satellite and terrestrial links,
• how and where to monitor the achieved QoS performance,
• which measures to prevent misuse/unauthorized use of network resource,
• how to optimize the use of network resource to fulfill the required QoS.

The research work on using IPv6 over SATATM is still going on and many results are
awaited.

4.10 Attenuation considerations

Path loss can occur in satellite transmissions due to the following conditions. Weather
conditions like rain, integrated water vapor concentrations and cloud liquid water
contents can affect the transmission. Attenuation due to rain is a major problem in the
Ka and Ku bands. The effect of airline traffic on satellite transmissions is also studied
[45]. Global predictions of slant path attenuation are also being studied and should be

25
taken into consideration. Information related to attenuations could be further studied at
[54].

4.11 ATM layer changes for satellite considerations

There are changes proposed to the ATM layer and specifically in the Service Specific
Sub-layer of AAL to incorporate satellite communications as the physical layer transport
of ATM. In one type of change, the CRC and the sequence numbers are moved to the
higher convergence sub-layer. This will entail larger blocks to put error detection and
correction on. It is suggested here [9] that high-speed, long-delay satellite links need a
unique AAL. That is answered in [24], where a separate layer called S-ATM layer is
provided for satellite communication scenarios. In another study [43], the ground
segment proposal is based on a new AAL called AAL2, which is considered to play a
major role in offering an efficient way to provide multimedia services over ATM networks.
It allows easy encapsulation of the complete set of media component sessions, which
forms a multimedia transaction into a single ATM VC connection.

4.12 Link budget scenario

Link budget is a generic term used to describe a series of mathematical calculations

designed to model the performance of a communications link. In a simplex satellite
communication, two link budgets are needed, one for uplink and one for downlink. See
[52] for more information. For example, the ISL performance could be studied by link
budgets, as in [31]. The link budget parameters of an optical ISL could be Operational
wavelength, Telescope diameter, Receiver type, Modulation, Coding, Distance, Antenna
Gain, Space loss, Total transmission, Receiver sensitivity and Required Transmit power
[31]. These are important parameters to be considered before the design of the systems.

4.13 Elevation angles

Impact of elevation angles on SATATM network design has been studied in [13]. Use of
GEO satellites means lower elevation angles and large delays in high altitude regions.
These problems can be solved by the use of satellites at much lower altitudes such as
MEO and LEO. By using MEO/LEO satellites and selecting an appropriate inclination
angle, these orbits can offer much higher minimum elevation angles over high altitude
regions. High elevation angles will lead to a very low probability of shadowing and
therefore offer a very high availability of service.

4.14 Cell transport methods

Various schemes are possible here. They are plesiochronous digital hierarchy (PDH),
SONET synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH), physical layer convergence protocol
(PLPC) and no framing. Studies have been done about the differences between them
[30]. PDH was developed to carry digitized voice efficiently in major urban areas. There
are some inefficiency regarding rerouting difficulty and redundant operations. SDH was
developed to take care of the totally synchronized network. SDH is much preferred to
PDH [30]. PLCP is another cell transport method and it is found to be not suitable in the
burst error environment [30]. Thus SDH is preferred.

4.15 Encryption of traffic

26
There are tools in production for encryption of ATM traffic over satellite links. A study
was done on ACTS ATM Internetwork (AAI) platform with a prototype ATM encryption
device [35]. One of the new generations of encryptors for unclassified ATM networks is
called FASTLANE. The study reported a successful encryption based experiment.
Encryption of SATATM traffic is certainly possible and should be used when necessary.

4.16 Related Information

4.16.1 High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) systems

Experimental HALE platforms are essentially highly efficient and lightweight

airplanes carrying communications equipment that will act as very low earth orbit geo-
synchronous satellites. High efficiency turbine engines or a combination of battery and
solar power will power these crafts. At an altitude of only 70,000 feet, HALE platforms
will offer transmission delays of less than .001 seconds and even better signal strength
for very lightweight hand-held receiving devices.

4.16.2 Commercial SATATM products

Commercial SATATM products are available in the markets. COMSAT is a

company specializing in SATATM products and the ATM Link Enhancer (ALE) discussed
before is an innovation from COMSAT. More details are given below.
• COMSAT Link Enhancer (ALE-2000) and Link Accelerator (CLA-2000/ATM)
provide an essentially error-free satellite link in a bandwidth efficient manner at
fractional T1 to DS3 rates. ALE-2000 is a networking device that allows
customers to interconnect ATM networks over satellite and wireless links at DS3
and E3 rates. The advantages or properties of the product involve efficient
bandwidth utilization, fiber-like link quality and significantly improves the
performance of applications over satellite and WATM. The error-correction for the
error-prone satellite links, is taken care of by introducing Reed-Solomon forward
error correction into the data stream and introducing interleaving. The CLA-
2000/ATM is designed for use over links (satellite or otherwise) operating at
fractional T1 to 8.448 Mb/s, symmetric and asymmetric data rates. It also
supports rate adaptation, ATM cell header compression and cell payload loss
less compression. Linkway 2000 product from ComSat can be used to cope with
the heterogeneity of network protocols and interfaces and develop satellite
network solutions that can accommodate these in a bandwidth efficient manner.
Using this product, ComSat researchers have shown an overview of a network
consisting of IP, ATM, FrameRelay, ISDN and SS7 services in a fully meshed
mode at data rates ranging from 64Kb/s to 32 Mb/s [21].
• ALA-2000 also provides interconnection of standard ATM interface rates to non-
standard satellite link rates. It is also compatible with standard ATM switches and
modems and provides cell error ratios of 10 to the power of –10 or better.

4.16.3 NASA-ACTS

• Operating in the Ka-band (20/30 GHz) where there is 2.5 GHz of

spectrum available (five times that available at lower frequency bands).

• Very high-gain, multiple hopping beam antenna systems which permit

smaller aperture Earth stations.

27
 • On-board baseband switching which permits interconnectivity between
users at the individual circuit level.

• A microwave switch matrix, which enables gigabit per second

communication between users.

• a Ultra-Small Aperture Terminal (USAT) which can support 9.6 kbps from
a 35 cm antenna to a 1.2 m hub. In experiments, the USAT has been
demonstrated at up to 1.544 Mbps using a 60 cm antenna and the 4.7 m
LET hub.

• High Data Rate Earth Station. The ACTS High Data Rate terminal is
capable of transmit ting data at 622 Mbps using a 3.5 m antenna.
Alternatively, up to 4 stations operating at 155 Mbps can be supported
simultaneously in a satellite switched time division multiple access
(SS/TDMA) mode. The Harris T1 (1.544 Mbps) Very Small Aperture
Terminal (VSAT) - using the ACTS baseband processor (BBP) mode, the
T1 VSAT supports up to 1.728 Mbps using a 1.2 m antenna. High Speed
VSAT. A modification of the T1 VSAT will allow it to operate with the BBP
at rates up to 22.5 Mbps in small, limited networks. [49]
• Gigabit satellite networks have been proposed and is operational [12]

4.16.4 Commercial satellite design guide

It gives a comprehensive overview of hardware and technical information on

satellite networks is present online at [52]. It is strongly suggested that the document be
reviewed before design of SATATM networks. SATATM networks were used in oil
industry, which is being used to gather, process and exchange oil-exploration ideas [53].

4.16.5 Rule-based practical design approach for building commercial satellites

A practical design guide for large satellite networks, which gives a design technique,
which employs a set of rules for satellite network design, in combination with extensive
databases of satellite parameters, earth-station parameters and user traffic
requirements, to synthesize a network architecture. This is a very important step for
practical implementation of satellite networks [17].

4.16.6 VSAT terminals

Due to high performance requirements, the design of an earth station is quite

complicated. This increases the costs and the need for maintenance. VSAT provides a
solution to this problem. The key point in VSAT networks is that either the transmitter or
the receiver antenna on a satellite link must be larger. In order to simplify VSAT design,
a lower performance microwave transceiver and lower gain dish antenna (smaller size)
is used. They act as bi-directional earth stations that are small, simple and cheap
enough to be installed in the end user's premises. VSAT networks are typically arranged
in a star based topology, where each remote user is supported by a VSAT. The Earth
hub station acts as the central node and employs a large size dish antenna with a high
quality transceiver. The satellite provides a broadcast medium acting as a common
connection point for all the remote VSAT earth stations. VSAT networks are ideal for

28
centralized networks with a central host and a number of geographically dispersed
terminals.

The weaker signal from the remote ES is amplified at the satellite acting as a bent pipe
and received by the hub ES. Thus, the lower gain at the uplink is compensated at the
downlink by the high performance hub ES. The down side of this arrangement is that
when two VSATs need to communicate, two satellite hops are required because all
connections must pass through the hub ES node. The data link supported from the hub
to the VSAT is typically slower (19.2 kilobits (kbps)) than that in the reverse direction
(512 kbps) [52]. DirecPC services from HNS, is one of the examples of VSAT systems.
The main disadvantage is that TCP/IP is not well suited here and X.25 is the common
protocol.

5. Conclusions

The paper discussed a comprehensive discussion about ATM over satellite

communications, analyzed its issues, explained its tradeoffs, and went over scenarios,
which warrant SATATM solutions. This paper is meant to be a good theoretical design
guide, for a group starting to achieve some thing in SATATMs. This paper is by no
means a complete design guide and the references section is meant to consummate the
ideas and research presented in this paper. Interested users should use this paper as a
starting material and go to each of the catalogued references to do further analysis.

The section following the motivating scenarios, mentioned SATATM solutions for the
same. Here, a particular motivating scenario will be dealt with, giving justifications for
selection of the same. For the design solution, the mobility architecture would be
considered (see sec. 2.1.2). Let fig.2 also be considered. A perfect example of mobile
networks is the presence of networks in the ships and the ship wants to handle
communications with other ships and also with the ground station. For discussion sake,
let us consider that the ship needs encrypted communications for security and that the
distance between ground station or land-based ATM network and the ship-based ATM
network is pretty huge. The cost of implementation is not a factor. The communications
are delay-sensitive. Multimedia traffic is assumed.

Prior to going into the solution, the design guides [17] and [52] should be reviewed.
Assuming the above conditions, one way of designing the SATATM network would be as
follows. The satellites in the network is a LEO-based with multiple satellites connected
by optical ISLs (for performance). The attenuation factors for the communication should
be taken into account. The handover protocol is chosen as FHRP due to its superior
performance in the face of delay-sensitivity and OBP/OBS is assumed to be present,
due to the great advantages offered by it and DAMA is not used in this case (due to
delay-sensitivity). MF-TDMA can be considered here. RS error code is used as the
external code and FEC as the internal code for error correction scenario. Suitable
adjustments are made for rain and air traffic attenuation. More over, a CAC scheme
based on [38] is used due to the superior performance of this scheme in the face of
multimedia traffic. TCP/IP is assumed to be used, since TCP is a stable protocol and all
the feasible changes according to [20] are assumed to be handled. High elevation
angles are assumed. The cell transport method can be SDH. The encryption is done
using FASTLANE, due to its superior performance. There is S-ATM layer present in the
AAL. This is done since, S-ATM is superior in the face of multimedia traffic and gives
better QoS.

29
This could be the modality of using this particular paper for design decisions. The future
directions could be adding practical considerations like cost of the hardware and
availability could be added to this and the overall structure improved to handle more
design choices. A software, could be designed taking in, the environment restrictions
could be taken in and the output of the software could be a high-level design solution.

30
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