Combined free/demand assignment multiple access (CFDAMA) protocols for packet satellite communications

An access protocol suitable for a wideband packet satellite network serving a finite number of bursty buffered users is proposed. Each station can reserve a number of slots by transmitting a reservation packet in its reservation minislot. The reservations are stored in the On Board Scheduler (OBS) and data slots are assigned to reserving stations on a first come, first served basis. Whenever the reservation queue becomes empty, the upcoming data slot is assigned to one of the station in a round-robin fashion. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated both by simulation and analysis and is compared with those of few other existing schemes. Different strategies for making reservations are considered.