A Disruption Tolerant Distributed Routing Algorithm in LEO Satellite Networks

Abstract

The low earth orbit (LEO) constellation network has become a promising approach to provide global communication services, due to its advantages in wide global coverage, low transmission delay, and convenient networking. However, the instability of the intersatellite laser terminal and the high relative speed between adjacent satellites cause frequent network topology changing problems for data routing. In this paper, a disruption tolerant distributed routing algorithm (DTDR) is proposed, where the satellites calculate the alternate path for transmission when the network topology changes, which improves the performance of packet loss. Specifically, each satellite maintains the intersatellite link (ISL) information within a specified number of hops. When an ISL state changes within the specified number of hops, the corresponding satellite calculates and switches to the detour path. Furthermore, the traffic is balanced through the detour process. Various simulations were constructed and show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the existing algorithm in terms of packet loss ratio and transmission delay.