A survey on packet scheduling over DVB-S2 through GSE encapsulation

A key features of the second generation for video broadcasting (DVB-S2) is the adoption of Adaptive Coding and Modulation (ACM) technology and Generic Stream Encapsulation (GSE) standards. In order to increase the system performance up to the Shannon limit a suitable resource management (RRM) exploiting this key features is a needed. Packet scheduling mechanisms particularly play a fundamental role to guarantee a better RRM, because they are responsible for choosing, with a fine time how to distribute the satellite resources among different terrestrial stations, taking into account channel condition and the quality-of-service requirements. This goal should be accomplish by providing, at the same time, an optimal trade-off between spectral efficiency, given the limited resources on satellite systems, while granting the requirements for quality-of-service. In this context, this paper provides an overview on the key issues that arise with the use of ACM technology and GSE encapsulation in the design of a scheduler to allocate satellite resources. Moreover, a survey on the most recent scheduling techniques is reported, including a comparison between different approaches presented in literature.