Improved Contact Graph Routing in Delay Tolerant Networks with Capacity and Buffer Constraints

Abstract

Satellite communications present challenging characteristics. Continuous end-to-end connectivity may not be available due to the large distances between satellites. Moreover, resources such as link capacity and buffer memory may be limited. Routing in satellite networks is therefore both complex and crucial to avoid packet losses and long delays. The Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) paradigm has emerged as an efficient solution for managing these challenging networks. Contact Graph Routing (CGR), a deterministic routing algorithm, is one of the most popular DTN algorithms. CGR is compatible with the store, carry, and forward principle, whereby a node receives a message and stores it in its buffer until a transmission opportunity becomes available. However, CGR relies on simplified models to incorporate potential constraints in the route search. For instance, the linear volume assumption is often used to consider capacity constraints. Moreover, capacity management and buffer management are mostly performed during the forwarding phase, once an issue has occurred. These reactive management techniques cause many collisions and increase the average delivery time. In this paper, we propose taking measures before or during the route search in order to find routes that respect both contact-capacity and node-buffer limits. We introduce the contact splitting and edge pruning operations to effectively account for the routing constraints. This ensures that CGR outputs the optimal solution in terms of delivery time among the subset of valid solutions. The problem is formalized as the Feasible Earliest-Arrival Path with Capacity and Buffer constraints (FEAP-CB) and optimality is proved. The proposed approach can also be used to book resources to be used in case of issues during the forwarding phase.