PERFORMANCE OF LAMS-DLC - A PROTOCOL FOR LOW-ALTITUDE SATELLITE NETWORKS

LAMS-DLC, a data link control protocol for low altitude satellite netw orks, was developed to overcome throughput limitations inherent in eve nt-based positive acknowledgment (POS-ACK) automatic repeat request (A RQ) class protocols by relaxing certain reliability constraints, in pa rticular the in-sequence delivery constraint. This relaxation results in a new class of link layer service, that of reliable datagram, and p ermits a fresh approach to link layer protocol design. In this paper w e discuss the motivation for such a protocol, describe one such protoc ol, LAMS-DLC, and compare throughput efficiency with results obtained from a simulation model. Results suggest that LAMS-DLC provides near o ptimal throughput efficiencies in the target environment, while using significantly less buffer space than is required for conventional POS- ACK protocols.