Voice, Data, and Video Integration for Multi-Access in Broadband Satellite Networks

Abstract

Multi-media integration of broadband services in a broadband satellite network is considered. Voice, data, video teleconferencing, and television with broad range of service (bit) rates are multiplexed through a broadband satellite, channel in a multiple-access fashion. Large (but finite) population sizes are considered with arrivals modeled by binomial distributions. A two-state minisource model is used for voice signals. For video, variable rate interframe coding is utilized to reduce the bandwidth requirements, and Markov phase processes model the modulation of the rates of the video teleconferencing and television signals.<P>Among these services, video and voice are real-time signals and can not tolerate large random delays. In our attempt to satisfy this, video and voice use the Synchronous Transfer Mode (STM) with a frame structure, while the data users (with their bursty traffic) send (and retransmit, if necessary) their packets randomly within a frame. The video and voice users make their schedules in advance by using a pre- assigned slot (status slot). The first portion of a frame is assigned to the variable rate video users, while the variable rate voice users fill up the last portion of the frame. Data packets fill up the remaining slots between these two movable boundaries in a random-access fashion. In this protocol, the delay introduced by the satellite is taken into consideration. This multiple-access integration protocol is optimized with respect to performance measures, such as the blocking probabilities for voice and video, the average delay for data, and the average throughput for voice, video, and data.