A multi-model reference control approach for bandwidth-on-demand protocols in satellite networks

This paper presents a multi-model reference control (MMRC) approach for queue-based bandwidth-on-demand (BoD) procedures in geostationary satellite networks. BoD access protocols address the problem of guaranteeing a high exploitation of the valuable satellite bandwidth while offering acceptable end-to-end delays to the traffic accessing the network. In queue-based protocols, the controller objective is to drive the buffer queue length to a certain target queue length; in the proposed scheme, model references (MRs) are used to address the problem of adapting the target queue length to the statistical characteristics of the traffic. The reference queue length is computed as a weighted sum of the outputs of the different MRs; the weights are computed on-line by evaluating the network utilization achieved by each MR, in response to the actual traffic feeding the system. Moreover, the target network utilization is dynamically varied based on the estimated network load. The BoD performances are evaluated via simulations. The work underlying this paper is based on the results of the GEOCAST,1 SATIP62 and SATSIX3 projects, financed by European Union.