IoT/M2M elastic traffic via satellite random and dedicated access

Owing to the variety of traffic profiles that Machine to Machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) applications may generate, this work studies the applicability of a DVB-RCS2 gateway when clusters of sensor nodes exchange data via satellite toward a central operational control station via TCP/IP connections. We propose a realistic architecture for the integration between wireless sensor and satellite networks, by covering technological issues from access layer up to transport and session layers. In this scenario, uncorrelated sensor sources generate measurements, which are multiplexed by a satellite gateway, before being encapsulated and delivered through TCP/IP flows. According to the traffic nature and the access methods in the DVB terminal, the suitability of a random access method in place of a dedicated one is an open issue, when throughput and delivery delay are the performance metrics at the transport layer. This work aims at investigating when the new random access methods, based on successive interference cancellation, are convenient with respect to dedicated access methods. The comparison is made in terms of access delay and employed resources, while the throughput is guaranteed comparable to the one obtained by using demand assignment multiple access systems. We outline that this is the first work that provides a queueing analysis for the comparison between random and dedicated satellite access techniques, when used by both short and long-lived TCP connections.