Standards-based MILSATCOM Mesh-overlay Networks

This paper proposes a MILSATCOM mesh-overlay architecture for wideband transponded SATCOM system that is based on commercial standards. The architecture employs Demand Assigned Multiple Access (DAMA) Bandwidth on Demand (BoD) schemes to simultaneously provide hub-spoke and mesh connectivity to end users. There are a number of advantages offered by this mesh overlay architecture. First, the mesh topology can effectively support real-time interactive services and peer-to-peer applications. Second, the hub-spoke topology provides remote users with accesses to a variety of services through a Gateway node. Finally, overlaying a mesh topology on a hub-spoke topology enables joint optimization of traffic routing and scheduling that can greatly improve the flexibility and efficiency of the SATCOM network. We will also describe the design considerations of the Connection Control Protocols (C2P) and traffic scheduling algorithms that can ensure QoS and efficient utilization of satellite communications resources.