An Optimization-based Approach to Flow Control and Resource Allocation Problem in Satellite Communication Systems

G Akkor, J.S.Baras, and M. Hadjitheodosiou

22nd AIAA International Communication Satellite Systems Conference & Exhibit 2004, (ICSSC), Monterey, California, May 9-12, 2004

 

Abstract

We propose an approach to optimize resource sharing and flow control in a multi-beam broadband satellite system that supports both unicast and multicast flows. We show that, in this architecture, the load on every spot-beam queue could be different, depending on the type of the flows and the distribution of the receivers across spot-beam coverage areas. This load imbalance may significantly under-utilize the system resources and decrease the system throughput when both unicast and multicast flows are active in the system. In this paper, we formulate an optimization problem for intra- and inter-beam resource sharing such that the variance of the session rates experienced by users of a flow located in different beam coverage areas is minimized. The result of our resource allocation also determines the maximum sustainable rate of each flow. We present results that compare the beam utilization and maximum sustainable sessions rates with and without optimization. We conclude that this method improves the average session rates up to 40% and average utilization of the system up to 15% when both unicast and multicast flows are active.