| This dissertation introduces a new data link control protocol appropriate for a low earth orbit (LEO) satellite network. The principal characteristics of a LEO satellite network are high error rates, long propagation delay, and high mobility. Although this area is traditionally dominated by forward error correction (FEC), this dissertation presents a protocol suited to this environment. In our target network environment, reliability constraints may be relaxed provided that the protocol provides a zero packet loss and zero duplicate packets capability. The proposed scheme (called LAMS DLCP) provided a reliable service at the link level based on a Negative Acknowledgement ARQ scheme to accomplish error recovery.; In LAMS DLCP, maximum sender queueing time (MSQT) and maximum receiver holding time (MRHT) are bounded, thus the inconsistency gap is also bounded. With the inconsistency gap bounded LAMS DLCP permits continuous transmission (i.e. if the DLCP has data available for transmission, data will be transmitted without protocol delays) provided the link is active. These benefits are obtained by relaxing the FIFO reliability constraint found in conventional DLCPs without permitting packet loss or duplication. As a result, LAMS DLCP performs favorably when compared with traditional DLCPs. An analysis of the throughput efficiency for LAMS DLCP and HDLC SREJ and a simulation of LAMS DLCP using MILCOM'3 OPNET verify the value of LAMS DLCP. |
