Integration of fade mitigation within centrally managed MF-TDMA/DVB-RCS networks

This paper addresses the integration of a Fade Mitigation Technique (FMT) within a centrally managed MF-TDMA satellite network in the context of guaranteed QoS delivery. Burst Length Control (BLC) is introduced as a suitable FMT and the methodology of its design and implementation within the existing DVB-RCS standard is described and simulated. The proposed technique provides compensation for rain attenuation at the expense of capacity utilisation. Within any fixed partition of the MF-TDMA space, by considering the space-time properties of rain attenuation, suitable geographical multiplexing of rain-attenuated and non-attenuated links allows the optimisation of the channel capacity utilisation while still exploiting the statistical multiplexing of the sources on the return channels.