Managing Routing Scalability in Space DTNs

Space networks, comprised of satellites, deep-space proves as well as the corresponding ground segment usually rely on scheduled contact plans, which are exploited by Delay-Tolerant Networks (DTN) routing algorithms to optimize data delivery. However, as space networks grow in size, the process of obtaining routes and forwarding traffic becomes both computationally expensive and challenging, thus limiting the overall scalability of the system. This problem becomes critical when routing is executed in resource-constrained on-board computers. While most of previous works have focused on optimizing data delivery performance, we propose two mechanisms to improve the computation effort and scalability of the routing procedure at the expense of an acceptable decrease in performance. Results from simulations of realistic satellite networks provide evidences on the trade-off in different cases.