Hybrid Circuit and Packet Satellite Switching Technology Based on Circuit Switch

Hybrid satellite communication systems with circuit switching and packet switching would optimize the utilization of transport networks, and is necessary for some applications carried on current communication satellites. In this paper, we propose a scheme of space borne integrated switching technology of circuit and packet based on time-division circuit switching for medium to small capacity networks with acceptable costs. In the scheme, the TST (Time Space Time) circuit switching architecture is used to support both circuit and packet services. The choice of using time-slot switches to forward both circuit services and packets will bring best backward compatibility and saving investments. For the packet scheduling problem in the output stage we have studied three algorithms, i.e., Uniform algorithm, round-robin algorithm, and priority opportunity algorithm, and found these three methods have the same performance. Simulation results show that our scheme performs better at small load, and when the system load reach 0.7 and circuit traffic/packet traffic ratio is greater than 6:4, delay and loss rate still can satisfy the practical requirements.