On the Determination of Channel Estimates for Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation in a Peer-to-Peer MF-TDMA Network

Army tactic to expanding the mobile battlefield has created a demand for a highly mobile network centric communication system that provides peer-to-peer communications. To enable this network connectivity over satellite communications (SATCOM) requires a sophisticated scheduling mechanism of satellite resources. The challenge with this new method of satellite utilization is to maximize capacity by dynamically allocating just enough resources between user terminals. Various dynamic bandwidth allocation algorithms have been proposed to optimize ephemeral satellite links. But, ultimately, the determination of signal-to-noise and individual transmitter and receiver channel conditions must be accurately determined. This paper will identify the satellite link variables of a dynamic multi-frequency time division multiple access (MF-TDMA) system and the impact of these variables on determining the accuracy of the channel estimates