Affiliations: University of Siena, Via Roma 56, I-53100 Siena, Italy | German Aerospace Center (DLR), P.O. Box 11 16, D-82230 Wessling, Germany | University of Technology Vienna, Gusshausstrasse 25/389, A-1040 Vienna, Austria | University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 7XH, UK
Note: [] Corresponding author: G. Giambene, University of Siena, Via Roma 56, I-53100 Siena, Italy. E-mail: giambene@unisi.it
Abstract: Satellite systems are a valid alternative to cover wide areas on the earth and to provide broadband communications to mobile and fixed users. Satellite systems should be able to provide to mobile users the same access characteristics of the terrestrial counterparts. This paper investigates packet scheduling aspects for Satellite Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (S-UMTS) transmissions based on Satellite – High Speed Downlink Packet Access (S-HSDPA). A geostationary bent-pipe satellite has been considered. The performance of different scheduling schemes has been compared in the envisaged S-HSDPA scenario, considering video streaming and Web traffic flows. We have obtained that the Proportional Fairness scheduler with Exponential Rule (PF-ER) permits to achieve the best performance for video traffic. Moreover, video traffic traces have been used to evaluate the objective video quality achieved at the application layer, considering the physical medium behavior and different S-HSDPA scheduling schemes.
