Buffer aware routing in interplanetary Ad Hoc Network

Recent research has shown that existing TCP/IP protocol family is likely to exhibit poor performance in space communication networks. To deal with communication challenges in deep space, an architecture called interplanetary Ad hoc Network (IPAN) is envisioned to establish a communication infrastructure among planets, natural and artificial satellites, and various mission elements such as spacecrafts and rovers. Some of these classes of nodes in such networks may be resource constrained in terms of storage, energy and processing power. This work proposes a probabilistic routing protocol called ldquoBuffer Aware Routing Protocol in Interplanetary Ad hoc Network (BARPIN)rdquo for routing best-effort network traffic based on the store and forward principle of Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN). IPAN is modeled as the network of two kinds of nodes, one with deterministic mobility patterns having greater resources and the others having random movement patterns with limited buffer space. Further we estimate the minimum required buffer size of nodes as a function of network traffic for optimal performance of the protocol.