Enhancing Contact Graph Routing Forwarding Performance for Segmented Satellites Architectures

FRAIRE, JUAN A.; MADOERY, PABLO G.; FINOCHIETTO, JORGE M.; ZERBINI, CARLOS

Buenos Aires

Conferencia; 1st IAA Latin American Symposium on Small Satellites: Advanced Technologies and Distributed Systems; 2017

The Argentinean Space Agency (CONAE) has developed a concept known asSegmented Architecture in which sets of satellites (i.e., segments) share commoncomponents and characteristics and the ability to interact with each other and shareresources. Although there are multiple potential benefits, technological challenges such asthe network protocols among satellite segments still need to be tackled. In general,segmented communications can be modeled as Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networks(DTNs) which have been recognized as a promising architecture for challenged distributedsystems. Among the routing schemes used by DTN nodes, the Contact Graph Routing(CGR) has received the most attention in the space community. Although thisimplementation has been capable of providing basic routing functionalities, there are stillmany challenges and potential improvements that deserve further research and discussion.In this work, we propose and implement strategic modifications to CGR in order to improveits performance and we make a comparative study by executing CGR in different scenariosand in different software-hardware platforms. Finally, we discuss the implications of theresults and propose future research lines to contribute to the development of the segmentedarchitecture