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At least 19 records

Achieving QoS for TCP Traffic in Satellite Networks with Differentiated Services

Satellite networks play an indispensable role in providing global Internet access and electronic connectivity. To achieve such a global communications, provisioning of quality of service (QoS) within the advanced satellite systems is the main requirement. One of the key mechanisms of implementing the quality of service is traffic management. Traffic management becomes a crucial factor in the case of satellite network because of the limited availability of their resources. Currently, Internet Protocol (IP) only has minimal traffic management capabilities and provides best effort services. In this paper, we presented a broadband satellite network QoS model and simulated performance results. In particular, we discussed the TCP flow aggregates performance for their good behavior in the presence of competing UDP flow aggregates in the same assured forwarding. We identified several factors that affect the performance in the mixed environments and quantified their effects using a full factorial design of experiment methodology.

Durresi, Arjan↗

Gigabit Satellite Network for NASA's Advanced Communication Technology Satellite (ACTS)

The advanced communication technology satellite (ACTS) gigabit satellite network provides long-haul point-to-point and point-to-multipoint full-duplex SONET services over NASA's ACTS. at rates up to 622 Mbit/s (SONET OC-12), with signal quality comparable to that obtained with terrestrial fiber networks. Data multiplexing over the satellite is accomplished using time-division multiple access (TDMA) techniques coordinated with the switching and beam hopping facilities provided by ACTS. Transmissions through the satellite are protected with Reed-Solomon encoding. providing virtually error-free transmission under most weather conditions. Unique to the system are a TDMA frame structure and satellite synchronization mechanism that allow: (a) very efficient utilization of the satellite capacity: (b) over-the-satellite dosed-loop synchronization of the network in configurations with up to 64 ground stations: and (c) ground station initial acquisition without collisions with existing signalling or data traffic. The user interfaces are compatible with SONET standards, performing the function of conventional SONET multiplexers and. as such. can be: readily integrated with standard SONET fiber-based terrestrial networks. Management of the network is based upon the simple network management protocol (SNMP). and includes an over-the-satellite signalling network and backup terrestrial internet (IP-based) connectivity. A description of the ground stations is also included.

Hoder, Douglas↗

Advances Made in the Next Generation of Satellite Networks

Because of the unique networking characteristics of communications satellites, global satellite networks are moving to the forefront in enhancing national and global information infrastructures. Simultaneously, broadband data services, which are emerging as the major market driver for future satellite and terrestrial networks, are being widely acknowledged as the foundation for an efficient global information infrastructure. In the past 2 years, various task forces and working groups around the globe have identified pivotal topics and key issues to address if we are to realize such networks in a timely fashion. In response, industry, government, and academia undertook efforts to address these topics and issues. A workshop was organized to provide a forum to assess the current state-of-the-art, identify key issues, and highlight the emerging trends in the next-generation architectures, data protocol development, communication interoperability, and applications. The Satellite Networks: Architectures, Applications, and Technologies Workshop was hosted by the Space Communication Program at the NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Nearly 300 executives and technical experts from academia, industry, and government, representing the United States and eight other countries, attended the event (June 2 to 4, 1998). The program included seven panels and invited sessions and nine breakout sessions in which 42 speakers presented on technical topics. The proceedings covers a wide range of topics: access technology and protocols, architectures and network simulations, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) over satellite networks, Internet over satellite networks, interoperability experiments and applications, multicasting, NASA interoperability experiment programs, NASA mission applications, and Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) over satellite: issues, relevance, and experience.

Bhasin, Kul B.↗

Satellite networks for education

Satellite based educational networking is discussed with particular attention given to the potential uses of communications satellites to help meet educational needs in the United states. Four major subject areas were covered; (1) characteristics and structure of networks, (2) definition of pressures within educational establishment that provide motivation for various types of networks, (3) examination of current educational networking status for educational radio and television, instructional television fixed services, inter- and intra-state educational communication networks, computer networks, and cable television for education, and (4) identification of possible satellite based educational telecommunication services and three alternatives for implementing educational satellite systems.

Singh, J. P.↗

Satellite Networks: Architectures, Applications, and Technologies

Since global satellite networks are moving to the forefront in enhancing the national and global information infrastructures due to communication satellites' unique networking characteristics, a workshop was organized to assess the progress made to date and chart the future. This workshop provided the forum to assess the current state-of-the-art, identify key issues, and highlight the emerging trends in the next-generation architectures, data protocol development, communication interoperability, and applications. Presentations on overview, state-of-the-art in research, development, deployment and applications and future trends on satellite networks are assembled.

Bhasin, Kul↗

Architectures and economics for pervasive broadband satellite networks

The size of a satellite network necessary to provide pervasive high-data-rate business communications is estimated, and one possible configuration is described which could interconnect most organizations in the United States. Within an order of magnitude, such a network might reasonably have a capacity equivalent to 10,000 simultaneous 3-Mbps channels, and rely primarily upon a cluster of approximately 3-5 satellites in a single orbital slot. Nominal prices for 3-6 Mbps video conference services might then be approximately $2000 monthly lease charge plus perhaps 70 cents per minute one way.

Staelin, D. H.↗

Enhancing End-to-End Performance of Information Services Over Ka-Band Global Satellite Networks

The Internet has been growing at a rapid rate as the key medium to provide information services such as e-mail, WWW and multimedia etc., however its global reach is limited. Ka-band communication satellite networks are being developed to increase the accessibility of information services via the Internet at global scale. There is need to assess satellite networks in their ability to provide these services and interconnect seamlessly with existing and proposed terrestrial telecommunication networks. In this paper the significant issues and requirements in providing end-to-end high performance for the delivery of information services over satellite networks based on various layers in the OSI reference model are identified. Key experiments have been performed to evaluate the performance of digital video and Internet over satellite-like testbeds. The results of the early developments in ATM and TCP protocols over satellite networks are summarized.

Bhasin, Kul B.↗

Internet Protocol Enhanced over Satellite Networks

Extensive research conducted by the Satellite Networks and Architectures Branch of the NASA Lewis Research Center led to an experimental change to the Internet's Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) that will increase performance over satellite channels. The change raises the size of the initial burst of data TCP can send from 1 packet to 4 packets or roughly 4 kilobytes (kB), whichever is less. TCP is used daily by everyone on the Internet for e-mail and World Wide Web access, as well as other services. TCP is one of the feature protocols used in computer communications for reliable data delivery and file transfer. Increasing TCP's initial data burst from the previously specified single segment to approximately 4 kB may improve data transfer rates by up to 27 percent for very small files. This is significant because most file transfers in wide-area networks today are small files, 4 kilobytes or less. In addition, because data transfers over geostationary satellites can take 5 to 20 times longer than over typical terrestrial connections, increasing the initial burst of data that can be sent is extremely important. This research along with research from other institutions has led to the release of two new Request for Comments from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF, the international body that sets Internet standards). In addition, two studies of the implications of this mechanism were also funded by NASA Lewis.

Ivancic, William D.↗

Design and Performance of the Acts Gigabit Satellite Network High Data-Rate Ground Station

The ACTS High Data-Rate Ground stations were built to support the ACTS Gigabit Satellite Network (GSN). The ACTS GSN was designed to provide fiber-compatible SONET service to remote nodes and networks through a wideband satellite system. The ACTS satellite is unique in its extremely wide bandwidth, and electronically controlled spot beam antennas. This paper discusses the requirements, design and performance of the RF section of the ACTS High Data-Rate Ground Stations and constituent hardware. The ACTS transponder systems incorporate highly nonlinear hard limiting. This introduced a major complexity in to the design and subsequent modification of the ground stations. A discussion of the peculiarities of the A CTS spacecraft transponder system and their impact is included.

SATELLITE NETWORKS↗

An access alternative for mobile satellite networks

Conceptually, this paper discusses strategies of digital satellite communication networks for a very large number of low density traffic stations. These stations can be either aeronautical, land mobile, or maritime. The techniques can be applied to international, domestic, regional, and special purpose satellite networks. The applications can be commercial, scientific, military, emergency, navigational or educational. The key strategy is the use of a non-orthogonal access method, which tolerates overlapping signals. With n being either time or frequency partitions, and with a single overlapping signal allowed, a low cost mobile satellite system can be designed with n squared (n squared + n + 1) number of terminals.

Wu, W. W.↗

Mobility management in satellite networks

This paper addresses the methods used or proposed for use in multi-beam and/or multi-satellite networks designed to provide Mobile Satellite Services (MSS). Specific topics include beam crossover in the North American Mobile Satellite (MSAT) system as well as registration and live call hand-off for a multi-regional geosynchronous (GEO) satellite based system and a global coverage Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) system. In the MSAT system, the individual satellite beams cover very large geographic areas so the need for live call hand-off was not anticipated. This paper discusses the methods used to keep track of the beam location of the users so that incoming call announcements or other messages may be directed to them. Proposed new GEO systems with large numbers of beams will provide much smaller geographic coverage in individual beams and thus the need arises to keep track of the user's location as well as to provide live call hand-off as the user traverses from beam to beam. This situation also occurs in proposed LEO systems where the problems are worsened by the need for satellite to satellite hand-off as well as beam to beam hand-off within a single satellite. The paper discusses methods to accomplish these handoffs and proposes system architectures to address the various hand-off scenarios.

Johanson, Gary A.↗

In-Space Internet-Based Communications for Space Science Platforms Using Commercial Satellite Networks

The continuing technological advances in satellite communications and global networking have resulted in commercial systems that now can potentially provide capabilities for communications with space-based science platforms. This reduces the need for expensive government owned communications infrastructures to support space science missions while simultaneously making available better service to the end users. An interactive, high data rate Internet type connection through commercial space communications networks would enable authorized researchers anywhere to control space-based experiments in near real time and obtain experimental results immediately. A space based communications network architecture consisting of satellite constellations connecting orbiting space science platforms to ground users can be developed to provide this service. The unresolved technical issues presented by this scenario are the subject of research at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Assessment of network architectures, identification of required new or improved technologies, and investigation of data communications protocols are being performed through testbed and satellite experiments and laboratory simulations.

Kerczewski, Robert J.↗

Satellite networks for education.

Consideration of satellite-based educational networking. The characteristics and structure of networks are reviewed, and pressures within the educational establishment that are providing motivation for various types of networks are discussed. A number of studies are cited in which networking needs for educational sectors and services are defined. The current status of educational networking for educational radio and television, instructional television fixed services, inter- and intrastate educational communication networks, computer networks, cable television for education, and continuing and proposed educational experiments using NASA's Applications Technology Satellites is reviewed. Possible satellite-based educational telecommunication services and three alternatives for implementing educational satellite systems are described. Some remarks are made concerning public policy aspects of future educational satellite system development.

Singh, J. P.↗

Toward a Communications Satellite Network for Humanitarian Relief

Since the introduction in 2008 of the "Ring Road" concept, proposing a communications satellite network designed to support disadvantaged populations, there have been a number of advances in the underlying technologies, CubeSat picosatellites and Delay-Tolerant Networking. We review the original Ring Road proposal, discuss relevant recent technological progress, and offer some tentative notes on projected cost and performance.

CubeSat↗

Some Mathematical Problems of Satellite Networks

Economic forces and technology development have made low-earth-orbit satellite constellations extremely attractive to the emergent personal communications industry. These constellations range from 2 to nearly 1000 satellites. Even though none of the constellations are as yet completely deployed, design on second generation constellations have already begun. The satellite coverage and network links provide some interesting mathematical problems. We examine some of the geometric and combinatorial problems associated with these networks.

Satellite Networks↗

Design Issues for Traffic Management for the ATM UBR + Service for TCP Over Satellite Networks

This project was a comprehensive research program for developing techniques for improving the performance of Internet protocols over Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) based satellite networks. Among the service categories provided by ATM networks, the most commonly used category for data traffic is the unspecified bit rate (UBR) service. UBR allows sources to send data into the network without any feedback control. The project resulted in the numerous ATM Forum contributions and papers.

Jain, Raj↗

Satellite Network Performance Measurements Using Simulated Multi-User Internet Traffic

As a number of diverse satellite systems (both Low Earth Orbit and Geostationary systems) are being designed and deployed, it becomes increasingly important to be able to test these systems under realistic traffic loads. While software simulations can provide valuable input into the system design process, it is crucial that the physical system be tested so that actual network devices can be employed and tuned. These tests need to utilize traffic patterns that closely mirror the expected user load, without the need to actually deploy an end-user network for the test. In this paper, we present trafgen. trafgen uses statistical information about the characteristics of sampled network traffic to emulate the same type of traffic over the test network. This paper compares sampled terrestrial network traffic with emulated satellite network traffic over the NASA ACTS satellite.

Kruse, Hans↗

On-board processing satellite network architecture and control study

For satellites to remain a vital part of future national and international communications, system concepts that use their inherent advantages to the fullest must be created. Network architectures that take maximum advantage of satellites equipped with onboard processing are explored. Satellite generations must accommodate various services for which satellites constitute the preferred vehicle of delivery. Such services tend to be those that are widely dispersed and present thin to medium loads to the system. Typical systems considered are thin and medium route telephony, maritime, land and aeronautical radio, VSAT data, low bit rate video teleconferencing, and high bit rate broadcast of high definition video. Delivery of services by TDMA and FDMA multiplexing techniques and combinations of the two for individual and mixed service types are studied. The possibilities offered by onboard circuit switched and packet switched architectures are examined and the results strongly support a preference for the latter. A detailed design architecture encompassing the onboard packet switch and its control, the related demand assigned TDMA burst structures, and destination packet protocols for routing traffic are presented. Fundamental onboard hardware requirements comprising speed, memory size, chip count, and power are estimated. The study concludes with identification of key enabling technologies and identifies a plan to develop a POC model.

Campanella, S. Joseph↗