Transmission rate allocation over satellite networks with Quality of Experience - Based performance metrics

Assuring a satisfactory level of Quality of Experience (QoE) to users is nowadays an important challenge for network service providers. At the same time, power consumption minimization is another important issue for network management. Consequently, the ideal goal is to maximize the QoE and, meanwhile, to minimize the power transmitted by network nodes. In telecommunications networks QoE is often linked to the transmission rate assured to a given application. Actually higher guaranteed transmission rate, lower packet loss, delay and jitter, which have a direct impact on QoE. In this view the requirement of maximizing QoE and minimizing power consumption conflict with each other because higher is the transmit rate better the QoE but higher required transmitted power. By taking the session time of a web navigation as a reference metric, in this paper, the authors propose a transmission rate allocation algorithm for satellite networks aimed at finding a satisfactory compromise between QoE and Transmitted Power (TP). Earth stations communicate with a satellite by using a common channel with an overall available transmission rate of R_TOT. The allocation algorithm is formulated starting from the Multi Objective Programming theory and the L_p-problem and it is called L_p-problem based Rate Allocation (L_pRA). Numerical results show that L_pRA assures satisfying operative compromise between QoE improvement and power saving.