2009 Volume E92.B Issue 11 Pages 3309-3317
This paper describes a novel channel allocation scheme that enables data to be collected from observation points throughout the ultra-wide area covered by a satellite communication system. Most of the earth stations in the system acquire pre-scheduled type data such as that pertaining to rainfall and temperature measurements, but a few of them acquire event-driven type data such as that pertaining to earthquakes. Therefore, the main issue pertaining to this scheme is how to effectively accommodate demand for the channels by a huge number of earth stations with limited satellite frequency bandwidth regardless of their acquired data types. To tackle this issue, we propose a channel allocation scheme built on a pre-assigned scheme to gather pre-scheduled type data but that also includes an additional procedure to gather event-driven type data reliably. Performance evaluations show that the proposed scheme achieves higher throughput and lower packet loss rate than conventional schemes.