Minimizing the Number of Switchings in an SS/TDMA System

In this paper, we investigate the problem of constructing a TDMA frame for a multibeam satellite system. Our objective is to permit the transmission of a given pattern of traffic, while ensuring that the number of times that the on-board switch needs to be reconfigured is minimized. We find that the underlying optimization problem is computationally intractable, but go on to suggest an efficient heuristic algorithm which we validate through experiments on randomly generated traffic patterns.