Quality of Service (QoS) Provision in the GEOCAST Project through Access Layer Protocols and Algorithms

This paper aims at presenting the protocols and algorithms developed by the University of Rome (UoR) within the GEOCAST IST project. The UoR task is to develop the access layer of a DVB-RCS geostationary satellite network supporting unicast and multicast traffic. All the functional modules of the access layer have been designed in order to address the problem of Quality of Service (QoS) provision to the traffic entering the satellite network. The cooperation among the different entities of the access layer allows to support a great range of traffic classes at the same time, thanks also to the innovative approaches described in the present paper. In particular, a great effort has been spent to design the Bandwidth-on-Demand (BoD) protocol through extensive use of advanced control theory methods. The proposed protocols and algorithms have been validated through simulations performed with the OPNET tool.