A dynamic cross-layer control strategy for resource partitioning in a rain faded satellite channel with long-lived TCP connections

The paper aims at devising a control system for dynamic resource allocation in a packet-oriented satellite network. The traffic to be served is represented by TCP long-lived connections (elephants). A Master Station adaptively assigns bandwidth and transmission parameters (bit and coding rate) to TCP buffers at the earth stations, grouping connections characterized by the same source-destination pair. The assignment is effected according to each pair's traffic load and fading conditions, in order to reach a common goal. The latter may consist of maximizing the overall TCP goodput, of equalizing the connections' goodput for global fairness, or a combination thereof. Thus, there is a cross-layer interaction between the physical and data link layers, whereby fading plays a role in the overall bandwidth allocation, through the tradeoff between bandwidth and Bit Error Rate (BER) of TCP connections. Three different allocation strategies are devised, and their respective performance is compared, under a realistic link budget.