QoS provisioning for a hybrid satellite DVB - wireless network with fade mitigation for tactical multimedia applications

Emerging hybrid satellite communications and wireless network architectures support high bandwidth services and applications for tactical users. In this paper we propose a cross- layer design approach focusing on physical layer interaction on the application layer using an OPNET simulation environment. This paper studies the effect of fading on dynamic resource allocations and the impact of rain fading on QoS parameters such as delay and jitter. The study also includes the impact of fading on multimedia applications such as VOIP, video conferencing, FTP and HTTP. The system architecture used for these simulation experiments consists of digital video broadcasting - (DVB-S2) for the forward link and DVB-RCS for the return link of satellite network segment. We also propose using WiFi and WiMAX wireless networks for the terrestrial segment. Our simulation framework uses the standard specified three categories of dynamic resource allocation mechanisms and four levels of priority traffic. The simulation results in terms of throughput, delay and jitter demonstrate the effect of fading on QOS provisioning for multimedia traffic over a hybrid network.