Q-Win – A New Admission and Handoff Management Scheme for Multimedia LEO Satellite Networks

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks are deployed as an enhancement to terrestrial wireless networks in order to provide broadband services to users regardless of their location. In addition to global coverage, these satellite systems support communications with hand-held devices and offer low cost-per-minute access cost, making them promising platform for Personal Communication Services (PCS). LEO satellites are expected to support multimedia traffic and to provide their users with the negotiated Quality of Service (QoS). However, the limited bandwidth of the satellite channel, satellite rotation around the Earth and mobility of end-users makes QoS provisioning and mobility management a challenging task. One important mobility problem is the intra-satellite handoff management. The main contribution of this work is to propose Q-Win, a novel call admission and handoff management scheme for LEO satellite networks. A key ingredient in our scheme is a companion predictive bandwidth allocation strategy that exploits the topology of the network and contributes to maintaining high bandwidth utilization. Our bandwidth allocation scheme is specifically tailored to meet the QoS needs of multimedia connections. The performance of Q-Win is compared to that of two recent schemes proposed in the literature. Simulation results show that our scheme offers low call dropping probability, providing for reliable handoff of on-going calls, good call blocking probability for new call requests, while maintaining bandwidth utilization high.