A spread slotted CDMA/ALOHA system with hybrid ARQ for satellite multiple access

We propose and investigate a new type of satellite multiple access protocol that combines the characteristics of the spread slotted (SS)-ALOHA protocol, code division multiple access (CDMA), and the hybrid automatic repeat request (ARQ) error controlling and retransmission scheme, in order to increase the throughput by reducing the number of retransmissions and to keep the bit error rate (BER) of the satellite link low when the channel experiences heavy traffic. The main feature of our proposed system is the utilization of two different fields in the analysis of the satellite multiple access problem. Since the hub now possesses the forward error correction (FEC) capability to correct errors that appear after the CDMA despreading of the packets, the satellite does not need to ask so often for the retransmission of erroneous packets and will ask for retransmission only when the FEC error correcting capability is exceeded. This paper also presents the adaptive optimization of the balance between the CDMA processing gain and FEC coding gain in order to obtain a better throughput for the SS-CDMA/ALOHA with hybrid ARQ protocol for satellite multiple access. The optimization is made with the constraint of keeping the bandwidth of the transmitted packets constant during all times. According to this, the effective throughput of the protocol (information bits over total transmitted bits ratio) is improved by adaptively changing the CDMA and FEC codes used in the transmission. This adaptive optimization is done by observing the channel status or load and increasing or decreasing both coding schemes' gains. Computer simulations show the performance of the proposed multiple access scheme.