arXiv · 2208.02128
Distributed On-Demand Routing for LEO Mega-Constellations: A Starlink Case Study
Abstract
The design and launch of large-scale satellite networks create an imminent demand for efficient and delay-minimising routing methods. With the rising number of satellites in such constellations, pre-computing all shortest routes between all satellites and for all times becomes more and more infeasible due to space and time limitations. Even though distributed on-demand routing methods were developed for specific LEO satellite network configurations, they are not suited for increasingly popular mega-constellations based on Walker Delta formations. The contributions of this paper are twofold. First, we introduce a formal model that mathematically captures the time-evolving locations of satellites in a Walker Delta constellation and use it to establish a formula to compute the minimum number of ISL hops between two given satellites. In the second part, we present an on-demand hop-count-based routing algorithm that approximates the optimal path while achieving superior performance compared to classical shortest-path algorithms like Dijkstra.
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Gregory Stock, Juan A. Fraire, Holger Hermanns. 2022-08-03. Distributed On-Demand Routing for LEO Mega-Constellations: A Starlink Case Study. https://doi.org/10.1109/asms/spsc55670.2022.9914716
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