Integrated voice/data protocols for satellite channels

Several integrated voice/data protocols for satellite channels are studied. The system consists of two types of traffic: voice calls which are blocked-calls-cleared and the data packets which may be stored when no channel is available. The voice calls are operated under a demand assignment protocol. Three different data protocols for data packets are introduced. Under Random Access Data (RAD), the Aloha random access scheme is used. Due to the nature of random access, the channel utilization is low. Under Demand Assignment Data (DAD), a demand assignment protocol is used to improve channel utilization. Since a satellite channel has long propagation delay, DAD may perform worse than RAD. The two protocols are combined to obtain a new protocol called Hybrid Data (HD). The proposed protocols are fully distributed and no central controller is required. Numerical results show that HD enjoys a lower delay than DAD and provides a much higher channel capacity than RAD. The effects of fixed and movable boundaries are compared in partitioning the total frequency band to voice and data users.