Response initiated multiple access (RIMA), a medium access control protocol for satellite channels

The means of achieving full duplex broadband access to either the home or office has been the focus of much research and entrepreneurial development in the past 5 years. This is the so-called "last mile" problem. One approach is duplex access to either a geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) or non-GSO satellite, through a relatively small satellite dish located at each home or office. This scenario gives rise to a multiple access problem in the uplink (i.e. terrestrial Earth terminal to satellite) channel. We present response initiated multiple access, RIMA, a medium access protocol which seeks to maximize the uplink system capacity while providing a suitable quality of service (QoS) for those terrestrial users accessing the satellite system. We assume an underlying TDMA physical layer and present simulation results which detail the performance of RIMA an environment where the dominant source of user traffic comes from the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol.