Efficient AL-FEC Mechanism Aided by Navigation Systems for SOTM Systems

Abstract

Satellite communications on the move (SOTM) systems are useful for many commercial and military applications, because they support network connectivity and mobility in very large geographical areas. However, SOTM systems suffer from channel blockage because of pointing errors of the antenna and shadowing by obstructions. This channel blockage reduces the network throughput. In this paper, we address a fully reliable application layer forward error correction (AL-FEC) mechanism for SOTM systems to enhance the network throughput. In particular, we propose an acknowledgement exchange protocol to ensure the reliability of the end-to-end data transfer as well as a transmission control scheme aided by navigation systems to enhance the resource efficiency in the AL-FEC mechanism. The proposed AL-FEC mechanism can predict channel blockage by utilizing navigation systems. The proposed mechanism then makes it possible to suspend the data transmission for the duration of the channel blockage. We also theoretically derive the file transfer time, the goodput, and the resource efficiency to justify the effectiveness of the proposed AL-FEC mechanism. The performance results show that the proposed AL-FEC mechanism can significantly enhance the goodput as compared with that of transmission control protocol. Furthermore, the resource efficiency is improved with the aid of the navigation systems.