Adaptive rate control and QoS provisioning in direct broadcast satellite networks

Adaptive rate control, if properly employed, is an effective mechanism to sustain acceptable levels of Quality of Service (QoS) in wireless networks where channel and traffic conditions vary over time. In this paper we present an adaptive rate (source and channel) control mechanism, developed as part of an Adaptive Resource Allocation and Management (ARAM) algorithm, for use in Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) networks. The algorithm performs admission control and dynamically adjusts traffic source rate and Forward Error Correction (FEC) rate in a co-ordinated fashion to satisfy QoS requirements. To analyze its performance, we have simulated the adaptive algorithm with varying traffic flows and channel conditions. The traffic flow is based on a variable bit rate (VBR) source model that represents Motion Picture Expert Group (MPEG) traffic fluctuations while the DBS channel model is based on a two-state Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel. For measures of performance, the simulator quantifies throughput, frame loss due to congestion during transmission as well as QoS variations due to channel (FEC) and source (MPEG compression and data transmission) rate changes. To show the advantage of the adaptive FEC mechanism, we also present the performance results when fixed FEC rates are employed. The results indicate significant throughput and/or quality gains are possible when the FEC/source pairs are adjusted properly in co-ordination with source rate changes.