Minimum Length Transmission Scheduling of Return Channels for Multicode MF-TDMA Satellite Interactive Terminals

In this paper, we propose a transmission scheduling method that deals with a problem of determining superframe length (SL) when allocating the return channel resources to the capacity request from satellite interactive terminals (SITs). The proposed method is shown to converge to getting an acceptable solution of the problem. A main purpose of the method is to minimize the SL in order to reduce scheduling-wait-time as well as improve resource utilization. The method provides great flexibility in scheduling by limiting the SL as short as possible and also achieves high resource utilization by smoothing the time-varying demands with an overload control. Extensive simulation results show that the method successfully converges to a desirable SL within a few iterations and attempts to reduce the SL to provide highest flexibility as well as diminish idle resources.