Wred performance analysis and design for tactical satellite communication

Abstract

One of the issues with the use of satellite communications (SATCOM) in tactical networks is the disconnection between the planning and management of the satellite networks and the network operations including planning and management of the deployed tactical network. This paper attempts to bridge this gap, addressing how the router interface connected to a satellite terminal can be configured to optimize the use of the satellite resources. Tactical networking community stakeholders have suggested the weighted random early detection (WRED) as a means to provide functional capabilities for the military precedence-based assured service (PBAS). This paper argues that WRED configurations is not “one size fits it all”, thus derives formulas and procedures to analyze the WRED performances for various configurations. The paper presents a reference WRED design in application to optimizing the tactical SATCOM resources. For the SATCOM link model given, formulas and procedures to analyze the packet drop and delay characteristics are derived to help engineers to carry out the network performance analyses for various WRED configurations. Impact of packet buffer size on the network performances is investigated to provide a knowledge base for the WRED design. The applicable ranges of the WRED configuration parameters and their impact on performance variations are investigated to help understand and design the WRED. A reference WRED configuration is presented to guide the WRED design for the tactical SATCOM network. The thought process to establish the reference configuration is also given to help understand the reasoning behind the design procedures. The results on packet drop and delay characteristics obtained for various WRED configurations show that the presented analysis method is applicable to the WRED performance analysis and design for the tactical SATCOM.