A meshed VSAT satellite network architecture using an on-board ATM switch

This paper proposes a meshed very small aperture terminal (VSAT) satellite communications network which uses an on-board processing (OBP) satellite with spot beams and cell switching capabilities. A novel approach is used for maximizing the bandwidth utilization of the satellite by performing statistical multiplexing on-board the satellite. MF-TDMA is used as the satellite multiple access protocol since it takes advantage of the flexibility and statistical multiplexing capabilities of ATM. Finally, the cell loss resulting from the limited bandwidth of the satellite link can be prevented by effective traffic control functions. A preventive control scheme has been used for this purpose. The leaky bucket (or generic cell rate algorithm) used as usage parameter control (UPC) controls the source traffic parameters for conformance with the traffic contract. Furthermore a rate-based flow control is used to control ABR services. The results of the performance analysis of the proposed system indicate that a high increase in satellite bandwidth utilization can be achieved, compared to circuit-switched satellite systems.