M2M Traffic via Random Access Satellite links: Interactions between Transport and MAC Layers

Abstract

Machine-to-machine services are witnessing an unprecedented diffusion, which is expected to result in an everincreasing data traffic load. In this context, satellite technology is playing a pivotal role, since it enables a widespread provisioning of machine-to-machine services. In particular, oil industry, maritime communications, as well as remote monitoring are sectors where the use of satellite communications is expected to dramatically explode within the next few years. In the light of this sudden increase of machine-to-machine data transported over satellite, a more thorough understanding of machine-tomachine service implementation over satellite is required, especially focusing on the interaction between transport and MAC layers of the protocol stack. Starting from these observations, this paper thoroughly analyses the interaction between TCP and the Contention Resolution Diversity Slotted Aloha access scheme defined in the DVB-RCS2 standard, assuming the use of an MQTT-like protocol to distribute machine-to-machine services. A novel TCP model is developed and validated through extensive simulation campaigns, which also shed important lights on the design choices enabling the efficient transport of machine-tomachine data via satellite.

Application protocols enabling internet of remote things via random access satellite channels

“…The completion time in a emulated cellular network is used as key performance indicator, and, according to the authors, OPCbased communications outperform CoAP and MQTT-based data transfer, at the price of a larger overhead. MQTT is TCPbased, and the contributions provided in [9], [10], [11], [12] shed some lights on how TCP behaves in presence of a random access satellite link dominated by collisions, because it may represent a limiting factor on the achievable throughput in satellite environments. On the other side, CoAP is UDP-based, and a comparison is on order when dealing with random access satellite links, in order to provide some reference figures on the achievable performance level.…”

“…On the other side, CoAP is UDP-based 4 , which realizes a connectionless communication and does not provide any congestion or flow control algorithms. While the use of TCP can be of interest in some M2M/IoT scenarios [12], [14], the majority of them would largely benefit of a lightweight transport protocol.…”