Transport layer enhancements on a satellite-based mobile broadband system for high-speed trains

摘要

The great diffusion of wireless portable and handheld devices, along with the growing availability of applications on the Internet, led to a significant increase in the demand of access. Users require to continue business or private activities when moving, with performance at least comparable with that experienced over fixed networks. A very interesting scenario encompasses broadband and uninterrupted access over high-speed trains. Developments of new telecommunication standards as well as innovative network architectures give the potential to fully match the aforementioned requirements. Nevertheless, there is a significant number of issues, especially related to system integration, mobility management, and propagation channel conditions, that need a careful analysis with the aim to support the design of real systems. This paper deals with this challenging scenario proposing a satellite-based architecture in which DVB-S2 and DVB-RCS standards, MIPv6 at layer 3 (for handover management), and an enhanced TCP version at layer 4, named TCP Noordwijk, allow to achieve good performance. An NS-2 enhanced simulator has supported the whole analysis. Results show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme against different modulation and coding configurations and compared with a selected set of TCP-enhanced versions.