Flow Control and Active Queue Management for Integrated Services in an Aeronautical Satellite Network

The IP-based broadband aeronautical satellite network will provide numerous new applications and services for both airspace system operations and passenger communications. Application of commercial off the shelf technologies and techniques has the potential to make network operations economically and technically realizable. However the performance of data communication protocols and applications over aeronautical satellite networks is degraded dramatically. For the satellite channel, the window based flow control algorithm may cause transient congestion. The flow control mechanisms with or without explicit feedback from the congested resource are limited in performance and not effective. We propose a hierarchical scheduler for satellite gateways. Different service disciplines are used for integrated services. A Random Early Detection Flow Control (REDFC) algorithm is proposed for best-effort traffic at the satellite gateways. In REDFC, each packet is transmitted with a probability that is a function of the queue length. If the packet is not transmitted successfully, it will be retransmitted after certain time interval. We also propose a virtual parallel queue structure as a new active queue management scheme for short life and long life web traffic. The new flow control and active queue management schemes will provide better performance for integrated services in aeronautical satellite networks.