A quickly deployable platform for multi-user communications over satellite links

We describe the research outcomes and resulting implementation and validation of a prototype IP telephony and data acceleration system for satellite communications. The system has been designed as a quickly deployable solution for generic use with fixed or mobile satellite services on land or sea. It has been developed in NICTA within the Office in a Box project and is currently being commercialised in 7-ip. Our main research contribution is a TCP proxy for long delay links, based on a novel congestion control and scheduling algorithm which incorporates lossless data compression. Additional contribution is in proposing and developing a silence suppression enhancement to the Asterisk IP telephony gateway. We describe the system and software architecture and software modules which include the satellite modem controller for the management of Inmarsat broadband satellite services. The system has been tested on a number of satellite services including Inmarsat BGAN, IPSTAR and VSAT systems. We present results of validation testing for multi-user IP telephony and data services and show performance improvement compared to standard solutions.