TCP Connections via Satellite: Cross-Layer Bandwidth Allocation, Pricing and Adaptive Control

Abstract. The paper focuses on the assignment of a common bandwidth resource to TCP connections over a satellite channel. The connections are grouped according to their source-destination pairs, which correspond to the upand down-link channels traversed, and each group may experience different fading conditions. By exploiting the tradeoff between bandwidth and channel redundancy (as determined by bit and coding rates) in the maximization of TCP goodput, an overall optimization problem is constructed, which can be solved by numerical techniques. Different relations between goodput maximization and fairness of the allocations are investigated, and a possible pricing scheme is proposed. The allocation strategies are tested and compared in a fading environment, first under static conditions, and then in a real dynamic environment. The goodputfairness optimization allows significant gains over bandwidth allocations only aimed at keeping the channel Bit Error Rate below a given threshold in all fading conditions.