A dynamic routing concept for ATM-based satellite personal communication networks

Satellite systems are going to build a part of the future personal communications infrastructure. The first-generation candidates for satellite personal communication networks (S-PCN) will rely on low Earth orbit (LEO) and medium Earth orbit (MEO) constellations. A noticeable trend in this field is toward broadband services and the use of ATM. For LEO satellite systems employing intersatellite links (ISLs), this paper proposes an overall networking concept that introduces the strengths of ATM to their operation. The core of the paper is the design of a new routing scheme for the periodically time-variant ISL subnetwork, discrete-time dynamic virtual topology routing (DT-DVTR), and its ATM implementation. DT-DVTR works completely off line, i.e., prior to the operational phase of the system. In a first step, a virtual topology is set up for all successive time intervals of the system period, providing instantaneous sets of alternative paths between all source-destination node pairs. In the second step, path sequences over a series of time interval are chosen from that according to certain optimization procedures. An ATM-based implementation of DT-DVTR in LEO satellite ISL networks is presented with some emphasis on the optimization alternatives, and the performance in terms of delay jitter is evaluated for an example ISL topology.