Satellite communication routing arbitration techniques

A satellite communication system which performs switching on data cells. A switch (80) receives the data cells at a set of input ports (IP1-IP128) and directs them to a set of output ports (OP1 - OP128). In order to arbitrate input data cells contending for the same output port, decision factor codes and routing codes are serially conducted to input registers (210), and a pseudo-random sequence code is appended. The combined codes are ordered by routing code in a decoder (220). The code with the highest decision factor code is selected in one or more determinators (230 and 240). The selected code is identified by a bit in a result register (250).