Evaluation of a Generic Unidirectional Header Compression Protocol

Header compression techniques are now widely used in wireless and satellite communications. The main drawback of these techniques is to weaken the transmission against bit error or packet losses. Indeed, a corrupted or missing header can lead to a non-decompression of consecutive packets and then to a disconnection until the reception of a non-compressed packet. The parameters of the header compression system should then be carefully determined. In this paper, we first review the main header compression protocols standardized for a unidirectional link. This analysis allows us to build a simple generic header compression model depending on few parameters characterizing a header compression protocol. The evaluation of this model in cases corresponding to particular applications allows us to draw some first lessons for the use of header compression in Satellite communications.