Satellite data system architectures: a comparison of architecture performance

Increasing cost and scheduling pressures continue to drive satellite developers toward standard data networks for handling internal communications. This internal communication is significantly different than terrestrial data traffic. Satellite constraints impose requirements not present in terrestrial systems. Performance of candidate architectures against satellite data traffic is likely to produce some counterintuitive results. This paper proposes a worst case model of data traffic for satellites. This model is then used to compute the response of several data architectures against this traffic. The conclusion is that standard data architectures are capable of handling satellite traffic, but care must be taken to understand the interaction between traffic and architecture.