High quality ATM operation over military and commercial satellites

Inter-operability between satellite and terrestrial ATM networks poses a number of challenges. Satellite and terrestrial fiber links have different bit error rate (BER) characteristics, transmission rates and bandwidth costs. These differences result in several challenging problems in meeting quality of service requirements for ATM in a cost-effective manner. This paper describes these problems and presents a number of techniques, that have been implemented in the COMSAT ATM link accelerator (ALA) device. The ALA enables the interconnection of terrestrial ATM networks over military and commercial satellite links. The ALA provides a number of novel features to provide fiber-like quality for ATM traffic and to maximize bandwidth utilization over satellite links. A test-bed is described which includes ATM switches, ALA units, ATM application equipment and test equipment, connected over a military satellite link, at rates up to 8.448 Mbit/s. Experiments were performed to evaluate the performance of ATM applications over a military satellite. Performance analysis and results of these tests are presented.