Feeders-TDMA: a distributed-control algorithm for satellite channel capacity assignment in a mixed traffic and faded environment

This paper presents FEEDERS(1), an access scheme for sharing, in TDMA(2) mode, the capacity of a satellite channel among a number of stations, on the basis of user demand. This scheme and its companion, DRIFS(3) [14], result from a study carried out by the authors on distributedcontrol protocols for geostationary satellite access. Both protocols derive from the FODA/IBEA(4) centralised-control system and have the same features. The distributed technique to compute the capacity allocation adopted by FEEDERS improves some performance in FODA/IBEA, but raises a problem about system stability. Techniques to solve this problem are presented, together with system performance. A comparison is also made with the FODA/IBEA system, though a more detailed comparison can be found in [15], where DRIFS, FEEDERS and FODA/IBEA systems are all compared.