Comparison of satellite and cellular architectures for downlink broadcast data transmission

Traditional voice and video-oriented networks such as the cellular and satellite networks are being increasingly used to carry data traffic. We endeavour to compare the downlink broadcast performance of the two architectures against each other on the basis of energy consumption, end-to-end delay and maximum stable throughput. The architectures are modelled as systems of Geo/G/1 queues. Queuing theory arguments and then sample-path based comparisons are used to show that the satellite architecture while being more energy-efficient has a higher delay and a lower maximum throughput. The variation of energy and delay with the total number of receiver nodes is also studied. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.