Throughput analysis of several reliable broadcast schemes for satellite communications

In this paper, a novel analytical method called steady-state function method (SSFM) is presented to investigate several full memory multidestination selective repeat (MSR) automatic repeat request (ARQ) schemes for reliable satellite broadcast communications. First the analytical method SSFM is presented for the throughput analysis of the basic MSR ARQ scheme. Using this method, the system throughput can be predicted with any finite receiver buffer. Simulation results show that for a wide range of system parameters, SSFM provides throughput estimation closer to simulation results. The accuracy of SSFM is higher than that of the conventional analytical methods for the MSR ARQ scheme. SSFM is also used to analyze the throughput of an optimal MSR ARQ scheme. In this paper, the throughput is optimized by choosing the optimal number of copies of a packet transmitted continuously to the receivers. Analytical results show that when the SSFM is used to evaluate the throughput of the optimal MSR ARQ scheme, the i mprovement on throughput of the MSR ARQ scheme is not apparent as revealed by other methods. Furthermore, SSFM is extended to analyze the performance of a type I hybrid MSR ARQ scheme in which the forward error correction (FEC) scheme is employed. Analytical results show that the hybrid MSR ARQ scheme has stronger capability of improving the throughput of the pure MSR ARQ scheme than the optimal MSR ARQ scheme. The decision of employing the hybrid MSR ARQ scheme depends on the packet error ratio in the communication environment.