Search of the minimum delay protocol for packet satellite communications

Under the conditions of Poisson arrivals and single copy transmission, we designed a minimum delay protocol for packet satellite communications. The approach is to assume a hybrid random-access/reservation protocol, derive its average delay and minimize the delay with respect to all tunable system parameters. We found that for minimum average delay, 1) a spare reservation should normally but not always be made for each packet transmission. 2) all unreserved slots (i.e. Aloha slots) should be filled with a packet rate of one per slot whenever possible. In other words, the utilization of Aloha slots should be maximized. 3) an optimum balance between transmitting packets and making reservations before transmission should be maintained.