Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation for a Space Relay Communications Network

We address issues related to efficiency, fairness, end-to-end delay minimization and Quality-of-Service framework in order to enable a flexible access and dynamic mission operation capability in the next generation NASA space-to-ground communication infrastructure. To provide optimal or near-optimal efficient utilization and fair allocation of bandwidth of the downlink channel while guaranteeing specific service requirements for different service classes, we propose two-level (long-term static and short-term dynamic) sharing of a slotted high data rate satellite communication link. The long-term optimal bandwidth allocation is implemented to provide per-stream/per-user service guarantee and give the inputs to the next level short-term dynamic bandwidth allocation. In our time-varying short-term bandwidth allocation with threshold regulation, a small portion of bandwidth is still assigned to all active spacecraft in advance but most bandwidth is dynamically allocated by the requests from them per frame by solving an optimal time slot scheduling problem.