Performance of a semi-permanent signalling protocol in the presence of channel fading for satellite multimedia communications

To improve the bandwidth utilisation and system capacity, a semi-permanent call set-up protocol using dynamic resource assignment has been considered previously. The protocol has been validated and its performance has been evaluated and compared to that of the permanent call set-up protocol using fixed channel assignment under an assumption of a good channel condition. The paper concludes that, in a good channel condition, the semi-permanent call set-up protocol offers more advantages and is more suitable for satellite systems than the permanent call set-up protocol. We validate the application of the semi-permanent signalling protocol in fading channel environments. We demonstrate that the proposed protocol still offers a higher capacity and channel utilisation in the presence of channel fading than the permanent signalling protocol. Despite the longer signalling delay with comparison to the permanent protocol, it can maintain a competitive signalling failure probability.