| Abstract: | This paper focuses on the radio resource management in low earth orbit‐mobile satellite systems (LEO‐MSSs) based on a time division multiple access (TDMA) air interface. A novel demand–assignment medium access control (MAC) protocol, named DRAMA+ (dynamic resource assignment multiple access—enhanced version), is proposed, where voice and Web traffic sources obtain transmission slots through requests sent by means of a random access phase. The round‐trip propagation delay (RTD) of LEO‐MSSs prevents an immediate feedback for each transmission attempt. Therefore, the main concern of the DRAMA+ scheme is to realize an efficient access phase. All the transmission requests successfully received at the satellite are managed by an on board scheduler. We have shown that DRAMA+ outperforms other techniques appeared in the literature in terms of voice quality, transmission delays for bursty data traffics and resource utilization. Moreover, a performance analysis of an ideal version of the DRAMA+ scheme has permitted us to prove the potentialities of the proposed DRAMA+ technique. Stability issues have been addressed as well as the impact on the DRAMA+ performance of the LEO satellite constellation RTD value. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
