Real-time control and management of roaming wideband SATCOM terminals

Wideband SATCOM provides essential beyond line-of-sight communications services. At this time, however, no widely adopted protocols exist to facilitate roaming between access domains. In addition, most commercial SATCOM networks rely on proprietary network management systems. This paper addresses use of a Manager of Manager architecture, supported by local intelligent agents, for managing a global “mixture of media” SATCOM network with multiple access domains. Emphasis is on managing cross-domain roaming, where challenges include terminal mobility, waveform switching, adaptive modulation/coding, antenna beam handover, terminal reconfiguration, service transfer, along with associated management and control of multiple service providers in realtime. Policy planning and enforcement coordination between subsidiary network managers and element managers is discussed.