Cost-effective networking via digital satellite communications

The major issues in forming a cost-effective and efficient network from a set of earth stations sharing the satellite resource are defined. The discussion is in the context of satisfying the performance requirements for transmission of data, voice, and image presented to earth stations in digital form. Multiple access techniques have significant impacts on the network economy. Although wide-band single-carrier time-division multiple access (TDMA) uses the satellite capacity efficiently and is cost-effective for networks with large traffic volumes per node, it requires expensive earth stations and is not cost-effective for networks with small traffic volumes per node. The concept of multicarrier-TDMA (MC-TDMA) is described and its economic advantage over TDMA is demonstrated for networks with dispersed points of traffic origination. Application of demand assignment to MC-TDMA is also presented. Some implementation issues are also discussed.