Hierarchical Routing for Integrated Space/Air Information Networks

An integrated space/air information network is a convergence of satellite communication networks in space regions and aircraft communication networks in air regions. It supports direct internal information interactions. Along with the extensive application of the integrated space/air information network especially in military fields, its routing problem becomes a key point of research. However, the existing routing algorithms are mainly designed for the space or air region separately and there is little study on the generalized routing for the integrated space/air information network. In this paper, we propose a Hybrid time-space Graph based Hierarchical Routing (HGHR) scheme for this integrated network. The hybrid time-space graph includes two subgraphs: a deterministic one and a semi-deterministic one. As satellite orbits are pre- known in the space region, we introduce a deterministic time-space subgraph. While each aircraft has a cyclic movement with the predictable contact probability and contact time in the air region, we construct a semi-deterministic time-space subgraph according to the prediction results of a discrete time homogeneous semi-Markov model. Simulation results show that HGHR has good performance in terms of data delivery ratio and end- to-end delay.