Performance study of bandwidth allocation techniques for QoS-constrained satellite networks

The paper analyzes the performance of the bandwidth allocation process over satellite communication systems in presence of specific Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. The reference allocation algorithms considered are based on Multi-Objective Programming (MOP) and are called "Utopia Minimum Distance" (UMD), "Constrained Utopia Minimum Distance" (CUMD) and "QoS Point Minimum Distance" (QPMD). The rationale under the algorithms is considering bandwidth allocation as a competitive problem where each earth station has its cost function that needs to be minimized by penalizing the others. The performance of the techniques described has been evaluated over a faded channel by using TCP/IP traffic. The analysis is carried out analytically by comparing the efficiency of the MOP based techniques with other approaches treated in the literature and by evaluating the effects of possible QoS specifications.