A Novel Call Admission and Handoff Management Strategy for Multimedia
LEO Satellite Networks

Petia Todorova

FHG-Fokus
Berlin, Germany

Abstract

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks offer a number of desirable
characteristics including wide area coverage, unique broadcast
capabilities, the ability to communicate with hand-held devices,
and low cost-per-minute access time, among others. LEO satellites are
expected to support multimedia traffic and to provide their users with
the negotiated Quality of Service (QoS). However, the limited bandwidth
of the satellite channel, the rotation of the satellite around the Earth,
and the mobility of users makes QoS provisioning and mobility management
a challenging task. One important mobility problem is the intra-satellite
handoff management. The main contribution of this work is to propose
a novel connection admission control and handoff management strategy
along with an advanced resource reservation scheme for LEO satellite
networks. Our bandwidth allocation scheme that we call the SelectIve
LooK-ahead strategy (SILK), is specifically tailored to meet the QoS
needs of multimedia connections. In SILK, bandwidth allocation for a
connection that has stringent Call Dropping Probability (CDP) requirements
will differ significantly from that of a more tolerant application. The
performance of SILK is compared to that of various bandwidth allocation
schemes proposed in the recent literature. Extensive simulation results
show that, compared with the other bandwidth allocation schemes, SILK
offers low CDP providing for reliable handoff of on-going calls and
acceptable Call Blocking Probability (CBP) for new calls. The novel
connection admission control and handoff management strategy proposed
improves significantly the performances of SILK.

Keywords: LEO satellite networks, handoff management, resource allocation,
look-ahead schemes, call dropping probability, call blocking probability ,
QoS issues, multimedia applications.

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Petia L. Todorova was Born in Sofia, Bulgaria. Received the M.S. degree in
electrical engineering and the PhD degree (1980) in computer networks from the
Technical University at Sofia. Joint the Research Institute in
Telecommunications of Sofia, where she worked until 1987. From 1977 to 1983
research on the development and evaluation of routing and flow control
mechanisms for PSDN. From 1983 to 1987 involved in the investigation of data
transmission using ISDN, and interconnection solutions for open PSDN and ISDN.
1987-1988 visiting scientist at the University in West Berlin. Since 1988 at
the Research Institute for Open Communication Systems (GMD-FOKUS) in Berlin.

Since 1989 exposed to ETSI and ITU-T SG 13 standardisation body work and to the
international projects RACE 1049, EU-P232, EU-P506, EU-P607, EU-P809, and
EU-P912, on ATM signalling, integration of B-ISDN and IN , broadband multimedia
services, mobility in broadband environment based on IN evolution and security
requirements for mobility in IP networks. Participation in ACTS INSIGNIA "IN
and B-ISDN Signalling Integration on ATM Platforms", ACTS ELISA "European
Experiment on the Linkage between Internet Integrated services and ATM",
ATM-Sat and COMED projects. Publications in various areas of network protocols,
architectures, interworking and multimedia applications. Co-author in one
internationally published book on Intelligent Networks.

(note: this biography does not include her most recent work.)