64 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL. 2, NO. 1, MARCH 2008
Fig. 2. Scheduling (bandwidth allocation) problem.
NP-hard (not solvable in polynomial time). It is actually mean-
ingful to impose some structure on the MF-TDMA and in this
section we deal with those issues, whereas the allocation itself
is left to the following section.
In DVB-RCS, the allocation of resources is a reaction to the
capacity requests performed by the RCSTs (or users, equiva-
lently). As defined in the standard, the TBTP shall be updated
and transmitted every SF, whereas bandwidth is allocated at a
frame level. Let us assume that the SF is divided into
frames
using the whole SF bandwidth
and with a time du-
ration
, where is the SF duration (typically
265 ms). We further assume that
is divided into dif-
ferent carrier types to accommodate different users accounting
for different service level agreements (SLAs), terminal equip-
ment, or location, so that an RCST uses only one type of carrier.
Under these assumptions, the global allocation is decoupled into
independent sub-allocations ( standing for the number of
carrier types). [See Fig. 2 (left side).]
Thus, the problem we consider consists in multiplexing
users into carriers of bandwidth that transmit during
seconds (see Fig. 2, right side). Without loss of performance and
to facilitate upcoming issues, we group all RCSTs that transmit
within the same carrier type (equivalently symbol rate) and the
same coding rate (in the DVB-RCS, adaptive coding is envis-
aged to compensate the physical quality of the transmission, i.e.,
channel conditions). In accordance with ETSI technical specifi-
cation [19], we refer to each of those groups as an area (we can
interpret areas as the earth surface zones where channel condi-
tions are similar).
We consider bandwidth allocation (sometimes referred as
scheduling) at MAC layer. In the rest of this paper, we talk
about scheduling ATM cells (53 bytes), but the method is valid
for any packet length. As an example, the DVB-RCS standard
describes moving picture experts group (MPEG) containers
(188 bytes) as a possible MAC-layer unit.
We introduce now the key aspect of the proposed framework,
which establishes the tradeoff choice between complexity and
optimality. A TS of duration
is fixed common to all areas
in each allocation process. In Fig. 2, the idea is depicted with
Fig. 3. Bandwidth allocation hierarchy in DVB-RCS.
only two areas. Due to the different coding rates, the transmis-
sion time of an ATM cell varies from area to area and so varies
the percentage of the time the TS is used, i.e., the bandwidth ef-
ficiency per area. Note that it is possible to transmit more than
one ATM cell per TS and more specifically, the DVB-RCS takes
into account 1, 2, or 4 ATM cells per TS. In this way, cross-layer
information from the PHY layer is taken into account. To get
cross-layer information from the upper layers, we propose to
use the 4 bits available in the field
Channel_ID available at SAC
messages. Note that this field remains unused if the satellite is
transparent. In this way, it is possible to distinguish different
traffic types that request capacity using the same type of ca-
pacity request. For example, we can consider the QoS defined
at IP-level in order to configure a satellite subnetwork as trans-
parent as possible at TCP level.
Further issues of the architecture are both a reduction in
signalling and an increased robustness to RCSTs’ PHY-layer
changes. Regarding signalling, note that TSs with the same
characteristics need to be defined only once (with repetitions)
in FCT and TCT tables. The reader can find in [17] and [20],
different approaches that consider changing the timeslot dura-
tion as a function of the coding rate of the area. Advantages
and disadvantages of such an approach have already been
introduced in this section. Adding now robustness issues to the
discussion, note that in full-flexible solutions, the PHY-layer
changes in the RCSTs require a whole frame redesign, whereas
this is not the case with a common TS approach.
For the sake of completeness, we include the hierarchical
bandwidth allocation concept defined in [19]. The motivation
is to guarantee some minimum resources to service providers
(SPs) as an extra mechanism to grant QoS to their corresponding
RCSTs. Note that not necessarily all RCSTs attached to a cer-
tain SP see the same channel conditions and thus, they do not
belong to the same area in general. It is then adequate to de-
fine the segment concept as the group of users that belong to an
SP and to guarantee some satellite resources to each segment
(e.g., depending on how much they pay). See both area and seg-
ment divisions in Fig. 3 and note that they do not define disjoint