Simulation studies of mixed traffic on satellite channels using TDMA-reservation protocol

The authors consider a TDMA (time-division multiple-access)-reservation protocol, which is a fully collision-free protocol with submissions of requests for data transmissions in preassigned subchannels, according to synchronous time-division multiplexing. They present the results of simulation studies of this protocol, focusing on its performance in a mixed traffic environment, constituted of classes of users generating different types of messages (from short, typically one-packet-long messages to long multipacket messages). Steady-state throughput-mean-message-delay characteristics for particular classes of users are obtained by applying a specially developed sequential procedure for statistical analysis of simulation output data and using observations collected during a single simulation run rather than a number of independent replications.<>