Techniques for optimising satcom packet data networks

Many satellite links use small satellite terminals and operate at modest data rates. It is a frequent requirement that the links supported by these terminals must maintain reasonable performance when noise on the link causes some packets to be corrupted and lost. When commercial off-the-shelf networking equipment is used with such links to support packet data exchange, the performance has been observed to be very poor. Aberdeen University has developed an experimental protocol enhancer which provides the necessary adaption of the terrestrial link protocol to allow efficient use of the satellite link. The experimental enhancer was used to examine the performance of packet networks connected via an enhanced satellite link, some of the results from these experiments are included in this paper