An advanced satellite communication system with on-board fast packet switching capabilities

This paper is focused on a satellite communication system having on-board fast packet switching capabilities. Different alternatives for the up-link access technique and for the architecture of the onboard switching fabric are considered. In particular an efficient time division multiple access technique with slots assigned on demand and a novel switching approach are proposed. Performances in terms of mean access delay and mean on-board switching delay are derived by analytical approaches and computer simulations.