Implementation of ATM over satellite for broadband services

It has been recognised that satellites can play a very important role in supporting B-ISDN services based on ATM technology. There have been several projects to exploit ATM over satellite for broadband services since 1992. These include the European RACE II CATALYST project which developed a satellite ATM demonstrator and the EPSRC project which studied the interconnection of Broadband ATM Islands via satellite. In a broadband network environment, ATM over a satellite can be used for inter-network connections as a transit link and for terminal access as access link. For transit link a small number of earth stations require a high bit rate link. Static bandwidth reservation based on estimated fixed rates provide a simple solution. However for terminal access a large number of terminals require low bit rate links. Since the traffic is expected to have large fluctuations, a dynamic reservation system is a more efficient but complex solution. Dynamic reservation time division multiple access (TDMA) appears to be the best solution, as it takes advantage of the flexibility and statistical multiplexing capabilities of ATM and supports all traffic classes. The paper shows that ATM over satellite can implement a flexible and efficient bandwidth resource management mechanism which allows the satellite link to be configured to meet the requirements of broadband services from low bit rate to high bit rate.