  This paper addresses the limitations of current satellite payload
architectures, which are predominantly hardware-driven and lack the flexibility
to adapt to increasing data demands and uneven traffic. To overcome these
challenges, we present a novel architecture for future regenerative and
programmable satellite payloads and utilize interconnected modem banks to
promote higher scalability and flexibility. We formulate an optimization
problem to efficiently manage traffic among these modem banks and balance the
load. Additionally, we provide comparative numerical simulation results,
considering end-to-end delay and packet loss analysis. The results illustrate
that our proposed architecture maintains lower delays and packet loss even with
higher traffic demands and smaller buffer sizes.
