Performance Evaluation of the PRRA MAC Protocol for GEO Satellite Networks

The provision of acceptable Quality-of-Service (QoS) for integrated multimedia traffic over a geosynchronous earth orbit (GEO) satellite network demands the existence of a well-designed Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol. This paper proposes a new dynamic satellite bandwidth allocation technique (Predictive Resource Reservation Access PRRA) which is based on accurate videoconference traffic prediction. Our work is combined with another work on data traffic modeling and prediction and is shown to provide very good throughput and delay results, when compared with other efficient schemes from the literature and with an "ideal" satellite bandwidth allocation scheme.