DAMA network simulation modules

The trend in military and commercial satellite communications systems is to use demand assignment multiple access (DAMA) systems so that limited communication resources can be efficiently shared by a large population of mobile users having wide variations of amount and type of traffic (voice, facsimile, data, etc.). A description of generic modules built using a state-of-the-art network simulation tool to model centralized DAMA systems is presented. These modules were used in a model of a 50-terminal DAMA network and it was found that under certain conditions (data rates, priorities, call arrival statistics), the probability of blocking and the probability of preemption increase monotonically as the holding time increases, whereas the network utilization increases as the holding time increases.