Network Control for Multibeam TDMA and SS/TDMA

This paper concentrates on the control of individual burst transmissions of traffic and reference stations in TDMA and SS/ TDMA networks. In a TDMA system, the principal task of a TDMA terminal is to transmit each burst at the proper time to assure that, at the satellite, the burst resides in its assigned location in the TDMA frame. The composite of assigned positions for all bursts in the TDMA frame, or frames if more than one transponder is involved, is called the burst time plan. The paper discusses a specific concept of control used by a station to acquire and synchronize its burst transmission to assigned time slot(s) in the TDMA frame. The concept is applied to single-beam (global or regional) and muitibeam systems. The method used controls the instant of traffic burst transmission by introducing a time delay at each station which causes the round-trip propagation time between the satellite and all earth stations to be equal for burst position control purposes. This time delay is simple to implement in the TDMA terminal's timing circuitry and does not require the storage of traffic to accomplish it. It is also shown that the control method leads to a simple means for accomplishing synchronous burst time plan changes throughout the network. The functions of the reference stations needed to accomplish the burst time plan control are defined and explained. The discussion extends to SS/TDMA, and explains how the satellite switch state time plan change can be synchronized to the overall network burst time plan change.