Fairness-Based Superframe Design and Resource Allocation for Dynamic Rate Adaptation in DVB-RCS2 Satellite Systems

In this letter, we consider a satellite communication system, where a gateway and multiple return channel satellite terminals (RCSTs) exchange information via a satellite based on the DVB-RCS2 standard. Transmission rate adaptation is used to deal with dynamic condition of return channels from the RCSTs. A joint superframe design and resource allocation problem is formulated to maximize Jain's fairness index. To overcome the high-computational complexity to obtain the optimal solution of the problem, we decompose the joint problem into two-level hierarchical problems and propose iterative algorithms to solve them. Simulation results show that the optimal solution of two-level hierarchical problems is very close to that of the joint problem, and that the proposed algorithms have low-computational complexity at the price of reduced fairness.