Performance evaluation of bandwidth allocation methods in a geostationary satellite channel in the presence of internet traffic

Resource allocation represents an important issue for the next generation TCP/IP Quality of Service-based satellite networks. Many schemes, proposed in the recent literature, consider Internet traffic as the superposition of traffic sources without distinguishing between User Datagram Protocol (UDP) and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) flows, even if UDP and TCP imply very different traffic characteristics. The basic idea of this work is that a resource allocation algorithm which is conscious of the difference may be more efficient because it can make use of the different behaviour of TCP and UDP in the presence of network congestion. Actually TCP reduces the source flow rate and, as a consequence, also the bandwidth occupancy when there is network congestion. The use of this feature within the bandwidth allocation scheme allows reducing the bandwidth waste due to over provisioning and using the residual bandwidth for other sources. The advantage is particularly clear over satellite channels where fading often affects the communication: having some residual bandwidth available for stations which have experienced fading can improve the satellite network performance. This paper presents a detailed performance evaluation of a bandwidth allocation scheme, called E-CAP-ABASC and studied for the satellite environment. The bandwidth is assigned to the earth stations that compose the network by a master station on the basis of a cost function whose main part is represented by a closed-form of the packet loss probabilities for the TCP and UDP traffic. The use of two different packet loss probability models for TCP and UDP allows exploiting the different features of the two traffic types, so improving the overall performance either in terms of packet loss or, on the other hand, in terms of the traffic admitted. The performance evaluation is carried out by varying the link degradation due to fading, the traffic load, and the flow balance between UDP and TCP. The results show a good performance of E-CAP-ABASC, compared with two other schemes. Advantages and drawbacks are discussed. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.