Novel down link rain fade mitigation technique for Ka‐band multibeam systems

Rain fades at Ka‐Band degrades the link quality and performance significantly. Several rain fade mitigation techniques for Ka‐band satellite systems are being investigated to improve the channel capacity. Methods such as power control and adaptive waveform techniques have been proposed for use in the uplink as they are capable of straightforward implementation. A novel down link power control technique for multi‐beam Ka‐band system has been proposed in this paper. It is based on the use of multi‐port amplifier, which is commonly used for dynamic power sharing of the beams depending upon the traffic. Payload architecture for multi‐beam coverage using multi‐port amplifiers has been designed for the proposed technique. The simulation results to compensate for the rain fade attenuation of one beam by sharing the unused power from other beams have been presented Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Large‐scale correlation of rainfall rate based on data from Spanish sites

Modern and future satellite systems working in the Ka and Q/V bands often require the application of site diversity to mitigate the degradations caused by rain. Satellite systems operating in these bands may make use of multi‐beam techniques to provide high‐capacity services. To achieve an efficient performance in both techniques, precise information is necessary on the occurrence of simultaneous rain fades in various links under a given satellite coverage. This is attained through the knowledge of the spatial characteristics of rainfall rate over the area of interest. The availability of a large database of rain gauge data from about 50 sites in Spain has allowed the undertaking of a study on the large‐scale spatial distribution of rainfall rate. Joint distributions and correlation parameters have been investigated for pairs of sites, and experimental results have been compared with predictions based on the ITU‐R site diversity model, obtaining the best results when stratiform rainfall is dominant in both sites. Some statistical dependence has been found even for distances above 700 km. The values obtained from the statistical analysis have been represented taking a given site as reference in maps of contour lines using standard mapping procedures. Correlation parameters are expected to decrease with distance; however, the contour maps reveal a significant influence of climatic and geographic factors such as weather fronts, orography or the proximity to the sea. The statistics and maps obtained are useful to optimise both power sharing in multi‐beam satellite systems and the application of site diversity. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

QoS‐aware routing and power control algorithm for multimedia service over multi‐hop mobile ad hoc network

This paper presents a QoS (quality of service) aware routing and power control algorithm consuming low transmission power for multimedia service over mobile ad hoc network. Generally, multimedia services need stringent QoS over the network. However, it is not easy to guarantee the QoS over mobile ad hoc network since its network resources are very limited and time‐varying. Furthermore, only a limited amount of power is available at mobile nodes, which makes the problem more challenging. We propose an effective routing and power control algorithm for multimedia services that satisfies end‐to‐end delay constraint with low transmission power consumption. The proposed algorithm supports the required bandwidth by controlling each link channel quality over route in a tolerable range. In addition, a simple but effective route maintenance mechanism is implemented to avoid link failures that may significantly degrade streaming video quality. Finally, performance comparison with existing algorithms is presented in respect to traditional routing performance metrics, and an achievable video quality comparison is provided to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed algorithm for multimedia services over mobile ad hoc network. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dynamic resource allocation for DVB‐RCS networks

To provide high‐speed multimedia services using the digital video broadcasting‐return channel satellite (DVB‐RCS) standard, it is imperative to efficiently assign timeslots according to user demands and dynamically take into account the variations of the propagation conditions. In satellite networks operating above 10 GHz, rain fading constitutes the dominant factor deteriorating the quality of service. In this paper, a novel two‐phase resource allocation scheme for a DVB‐RCS compliant satellite network is proposed. The scheme operates in two phases, the resource calculation and the resource assignment. In the resource calculation phase, based on a dynamic channel model, an efficient algorithm is presented to determine the superframe design that maximizes system throughput. In the resource assignment phase, a novel Hybrid Bin‐packing algorithm is introduced maximizing the utilization of the multi‐frequency time division multiple access frame. The proposed algorithm has been compared with existing schemes exhibiting significantly better results with regard to overall system throughput. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performance modeling of FEC‐based unequal error protection for H.264/AVC video streaming over burst‐loss channels

Unequal error protection systems are a popular technique for video streaming. Forward error correction (FEC) is one of error control techniques to improve the quality of video streaming over lossy channels. Moreover, frame‐level FEC techniques have been proposed for video streaming because of different priority video frames within the transmission rate constraint on a Bernoulli channel. However, various communication and storage systems are likely corrupted by bursts of noise in the current wireless behavior. If the burst losses go beyond the protection capacity of FEC, the efficacy of FEC can be degraded. Therefore, our proposed model allows an assessment of the perceived quality of H.264/AVC video streaming over bursty channels, and is validated by simulation experiments on the NS‐2 network simulator at a given estimate of the packet loss ratio and average burst length. The results suggest a useful reference in designing the FEC scheme for video applications, and as the video coding and channel parameters are given, the proposed model can provide a more accurate evaluation tool for video streaming over bursty channels and help to evaluate the impact of FEC performance on different burst‐loss parameters. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the rain attenuation dynamics: spatial‐temporal analysis of rainfall rate and fade duration statistics

Knowledge about the dynamic characteristics of rain attenuation is of utmost importance for many applications in terrestrial and satellite communication systems operating at frequencies above 10 GHz. Long‐term rain rate statistics and rain rate duration statistics are usually available from meteorological data. In this paper, a spatial–temporal analysis is employed in order to evaluate the rain attenuation power spectrum of a terrestrial/satellite path. The predicted power spectrum is compared with experimental data. Based on the spectral analysis of rainfall rate a method for converting rain rate duration statistics to link fade duration statistics is also proposed. Fade duration statistics are presented for terrestrial and satellite links and compared with available experimental data. The agreement between the predicted results and the experimental data has been found to be quite encouraging. Finally, numerical results are presented for various climatic zones, elevation angles and frequencies. Some very useful conclusions concerning the dynamic properties of rain attenuation for a microwave path are deduced. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Slack time–based scheduling scheme for live video streaming in P2P network

Nowadays, peer‐to‐peer network plays a significant role in data transfer and communication. The past few years have witnessed considerable growth in this area because of its inherent advantages. Peer‐to‐peer live streaming has a significant impact on video transmission over the Internet. Major factors that influence the performance of P2P live streaming are overlay construction and scheduling strategies. Although, a large number of scheduling schemes are developed but none of them is comprehensive enough to provide solutions to live streaming issues. These suffer from substantial delay and low video quality at the receiver side. In this paper, a new start‐up–based selection procedure and slack time–based scheduling scheme is proposed. The start‐up selection procedure defines the start‐up buffer location for new peer, and the scheduling scheme selects both the chunk and peers. The proposed scheduling scheme uses both push and pull priority–based strategies. The simulation results of the proposed approach demonstrates significant improvement in both the network performance and video quality at the receiver side. It is observed that playback delay, startup delay, and end‐to‐end delay in the network are reduced and quality of the video at receiver side is improved as the distortion and frame loss ratio is decreased.     

Railway satellite channel at Ku band and above: Composite dynamic modeling for the design of fade mitigation techniques

Past studies on the railway satellite channel (RSC) at Ku band and above consider exclusively the attenuation coming from the metal power arches (PAs) along the railway route, producing significant though deterministic periodical fast fading. Nevertheless, limited attention has been given to model tropospheric effects on the RSC. The present paper takes a more comprehensive view of the RSC by introducing a novel stochastic dynamic model of rain fading in mobile satellite systems on top of the diffraction because of PAs. The proposed approach builds upon well‐established research on rain attenuation time series synthesizers employing stochastic differential equations. It is shown that this propagation tool may provide significant aid, in general, in mobile satellite system simulations and in the design of fade mitigation techniques (FMTs), particularly aiming at the railway scenario. The tool enables the generation of fade events, fade duration statistics, rain attenuation power spectrum and predicting the necessary FMT control loop margin. This is particularly useful for the RSC because most of the proposed FMTs focusing on PAs are not appropriate for compensating atmospheric fading. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performance of delay‐sensitive traffic in multi‐layered satellite IP networks with on‐board processing capability

In this article, performance of delay‐sensitive traffic in multi‐layered satellite Internet Protocol (IP) networks with on‐board processing (OBP) capability is investigated. With OBP, a satellite can process the received data, and according to the nature of application, it can decide on the transmission properties. First, we present a concise overview of relevant aspects of satellite networks to delay‐sensitive traffic and routing. Then, in order to improve the system performance for delay‐sensitive traffic, specifically Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), a novel adaptive routing mechanism in two‐layered satellite network considering the network's real‐time information is introduced and evaluated. Adaptive Routing Protocol for Quality of Service (ARPQ) utilizes OBP and avoids congestion by distributing traffic load between medium‐Earth orbit and low‐Earth orbit layers. We utilize a prioritized queueing policy to satisfy quality‐of‐service (QoS) requirements of delay‐sensitive applications while evading non‐real‐time traffic suffer low performance level. The simulation results verify that multi‐layered satellite networks with OBP capabilities and QoS mechanisms are essential for feasibility of packet‐based high‐quality delay‐sensitive services which are expected to be the vital components of next‐generation communications networks. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Application of ANFIS Power Control for Downlink CDMA‐Based LMDS Systems

Rain attenuation and intercell interference are two crucial factors in the performance of broadband wireless access networks such as local multipoint distribution systems (LMDS) operating at frequencies above 20 GHz. Power control can enhance the performance of downlink CDMA‐based LMDS systems by reducing intercell interference under clear sky conditions; however, it may damage system performance under rainy conditions. To ensure robust operation under both clear sky and rainy conditions, we propose a novel power‐control scheme which applies an adaptive neuro‐fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) for downlink CDMA‐based LMDS systems. In the proposed system, the rain rate and the number of users are two inputs of the fuzzy inference system, and output is defined as channel quality, which is applied in the power control scheme to adjust the power control region. Moreover, ITU‐R P.530 is employed to estimate the rain attenuation. The influence of the rain rate and the number of users on the distance‐based power control (DBPC) scheme is included in the simulation model as the training database. Simulation results indicate that the proposed scheme improves the throughput of the DBPC scheme.     

Rain Attenuation and Doppler Shift Compensation for Satellite Communications

In high‐speed multimedia satellite communication systems, it is essential to provide high‐quality, economical services by using efficient transmission schemes which can overcome channel impairments appearing in the satellite link. This paper introduces techniques to compensate for rain attenuation and the Doppler shift in the satellite communication link. An adaptive transmission technique with a control algorithm to adaptively allocate transmission schemes is used as a countermeasure to rain attenuation. We introduce a new rain attenuation modeling technique for estimating system performance and propose a novel Doppler shift compensation algorithm with reduced hardware complexity. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can provide greatly enhanced performance compared to conventional algorithms. Simulation software and hardware which incorporate the proposed techniques are also demonstrated.     

Uplink power control based on receiver noise measurements insatellite communication systems

The authors describe a novel procedure for uplink power control in a multicarrier satellite communication system. The purpose of uplink power control is to compensate for rain attenuation so that all carriers are at the same power level at the input of the satellite nonlinear amplifier. The presence and amount of rain attenuation is predicted by continuous monitoring of the receiver noise power. Attractive features of the proposed scheme include its conceptual simplicity, ease of implementation, applicability to a wide variety of scenarios and avoidance of the undesirable overhead coordination, and delay requirements associated with previously used methods     

Effective Admission Policy for Multimedia Traffic Connections over Satellite DVB‐RCS Network

Thanks to the great possibilities of providing different types of telecommunication traffic to a large geographical area, satellite networks are expected to be an essential component of the next‐generation internet. As a result, issues concerning the designing and testing of efficient connection‐admission‐control (CAC) strategies in order to increase the quality of service (QoS) for multimedia traffic sources, are attractive and at the cutting edge of research. This paper investigates the potential strengths of a generic digital‐video‐broadcasting return‐channel‐via‐satellite (DVB‐RCS) system architecture, proposing a new CAC algorithm with the aim of efficiently managing real‐time multimedia video sources, both with constant and high variable data rate transmission; moreover, the proposed admission strategy is compared with a well‐known iterative CAC mainly designed for the managing of real‐time bursty traffic sources in order to demonstrate that the new algorithm is also well suited for those traffic sources. Performance analysis shows that, both algorithms guarantee the agreed QoS to real‐time bursty connections that are more sensitive to delay jitter; however, our proposed algorithm can also manage interactive real‐time multimedia traffic sources in high load and mixed traffic conditions.     

Per‐antenna power minimization in symbol‐level precoding for the multibeam satellite downlink

This paper addresses the problem of multiuser interference in the forward downlink channel of a multibeam satellite system. A symbol‐level precoding scheme is considered, to exploit the multiuser interference and transform it into useful power at the receiver side, through a joint utilization of the data information and the channel state information. In this context, a per‐antenna power minimization scheme is proposed, under quality‐of‐service constraints, for multilevel modulation schemes. The consideration of the power limitations individually for each transmitting radio frequency chain is a central aspect of this work, and it allows to deal with systems using separate per‐antenna amplifiers. Moreover, this feature is also particularly relevant for systems suffering nonlinear effects of the channel. This is the case of satellite systems, where the nonlinear amplifiers should be properly driven to reduce the detrimental saturation effect. In the proposed scheme, the transmitted signals are designed to reduce the power peaks, while guaranteeing some specific target signal‐to‐noise ratios at the receivers. Numerical results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, which is compared both with the state of the art in symbol‐level precoding and with the conventional minimum mean square error precoding approach.     

The transmission of MPEG‐2 VBR video under usage parameter control

This paper studies the transmission of MPEG‐2 VBR video over ATM network under usage parameter control. The idea is to seek a compromise between the network utilization and the quality of video service by applying UPC‐based rate control strategies to the video source. A modified leaky bucket algorithm is proposed to calculate the constraints on the bit‐rate guaranteeing conformance to peak cell rate, sustainable cell rate and burst tolerance usage parameters. Two rate control strategies, one for real‐time generated video coding and the other for pre‐compressed video, are proposed for MPEG‐2 VBR video. The rate control strategies control the video source to generate traffic conforming to the constraints on the bit rate. The experimental results show that both the UPC‐based rate control strategies can provide lossless transmission from the source perspective as well as to reduce the burstiness of the traffic. To keep within the bit‐rate allowed, the control method uses coarser quantization to maintain better picture quality than that by removing the number of AC transformed coefficients. The slight degradation of picture quality caused by the source rate control is preferable than the severe drop of picture quality caused by the cell loss at UPC. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fuzzy-Based Uplink Power Control in Forward Broadband Satellite Links

End-to-end performance of broadband satellite links operating at Ku band and above is studied in this paper. The problem of power control in terms of optimal power allocation and maximization of the total carrier-to-interference-and-noise ratio is considered. More specifically, the paper proposes the use of Fuzzy Inference Systems (FIS) to optimize power allocation in a dual-hop (end-to-end) satellite system, considering the general case of dual-polarized satellite links with transparent satellite transponder. The quality of the link is assessed through the FIS based on the predicted values of rain attenuation induced on the corresponding links and the interference-to-noise ratios. According to this estimation, the satellite hub-station increases or reduces the allocated uplink power. The proposed scheme’s effectiveness is investigated in terms of carrier-to-noise plus depolarization plus interference ratio and power consumption for 30/20 GHz frequency in the uplink and the downlink respectively. A variety of conditions is considered regarding the rain attenuation values from 0 (no rain) to 30 dB and interference-to-noise ratio from ?15 to 15 dB to both links. Finally, the scheme is compared to step-based power control algorithms, showing that it can significantly reduce the total consumed power.     

A distributed utility‐based scheduling for peer‐to‐peer video streaming over wireless networks

Interactive multimedia applications such as peer‐to‐peer (P2P) video services over the Internet have gained increasing popularity during the past few years. However, the adopted Internet‐based P2P overlay network architecture hides the underlying network topology, assuming that channel quality is always in perfect condition. Because of the time‐varying nature of wireless channels, this hardly meets the user‐perceived video quality requirement when used in wireless environments. Considering the tightly coupled relationship between P2P overlay networks and the underlying networks, we propose a distributed utility‐based scheduling algorithm on the basis of a quality‐driven cross‐layer design framework to jointly optimize the parameters of different network layers to achieve highly improved video quality for P2P video streaming services in wireless networks. In this paper, the quality‐driven P2P scheduling algorithm is formulated into a distributed utility‐based distortion‐delay optimization problem, where the expected video distortion is minimized under the constraint of a given packet playback deadline to select the optimal combination of system parameters residing in different network layers. Specifically, encoding behaviors, network congestion, Automatic Repeat Request/Query (ARQ), and modulation and coding are jointly considered. Then, we provide the algorithmic solution to the formulated problem. The distributed optimization running on each peer node adopted in the proposed scheduling algorithm greatly reduces the computational intensity. Extensive experimental results also demonstrate 4–14 dB quality enhancement in terms of peak signal‐to‐noise ratio by using the proposed scheduling algorithm. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Video transmission over mobile satellite systems

Mobile satellite communication channels are characterized by long transmission delays, variation of these delays, high bit‐error‐rates, shadowing and the multipath effect which severely reduce the quality of video services. Error control techniques including feedback mechanisms, error concealment methods, forward error correction techniques and error resilience schemes are examined in this paper for achieving a high‐integrity video transmission over a mobile satellite channel. The application of three different error resilience algorithms, namely Turbo codes, error‐resilient entropy codes and two‐way decoding using reversible codes is presented. Their joint performance is also examined. Furthermore, a low‐delay and low‐complexity video transcoding algorithm which fully interconnects two very low bit rate video communication standards: MPEG‐4 and H.263 is also elaborated. This transcoder works as a gateway tool which links two heterogeneous multimedia networks, such as a mobile satellite network and a land‐based network, with negligible processing delay and complexity. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quality perception when streaming video on tablet devices

The proposed work aims at analyzing the quality perceived by the user when streaming video on tablet devices. The contributions of this paper are: (i) to analyze the results of subjective quality assessments to determine which Quality of Service (QoS) parameters mainly affect the users’ Quality of Experience (QoE) in video streaming over tablet devices; (ii) to define a parametric quality model useful in system control and optimization for the considered scenarios; (iii) to compare the performance of the proposed model with subjective quality results obtained in alternative state-of-the-art studies and investigate whether other models could be applied to our case and vice versa.     

TCP-Peachtree: a multicast transport protocol for satellite IP networks

In this paper, a reliable multicast transport protocol TCP-Peachtree is proposed for satellite Internet protocol (IP) networks. In addition to the acknowledgment implosion and scalability problems in terrestrial wirelined networks, satellite multicasting has additional problems, i.e., different multicast topology, different type of congestion control problems, and low bandwidth feedback link. In TCP-Peachtree, the modified B+ tree logical hierarchical structure is used to form dynamic multicast groups. Local error recovery and acknowledgment (ACK) aggregations are performed within each subgroup and also via logical subgroups. In order to avoid the overall performance degradation caused by some worst receivers, a local relay scheme is designed. Two new algorithms, jump start and quick recovery, which are based on the usage of a type of low-priority segments called NIL segments, are proposed for congestion control. NIL segments are used to probe the availability of network resources and also for error recovery. The delayed selective acknowledgment (SACK) scheme is adopted to address the bandwidth asymmetry problems and a hold state is developed to address persistent fades. The simulation results show that the congestion control algorithms of TCP-Peachtree outperform the TCP-NewReno when combined with our hierarchical groups and improve the throughput performance during rain fades. It is also shown that TCP-Peachtree achieves fairness and is very highly scalability.