Reliable Data Delivery over LEO Satellite Networks

The Sixth-Generation (6G) of wireless communication networks is being designed to meet the ever more tight requirements posed by emerging services, i.e., ultra-low latency, extreme capacity, high efficiency, and strong reliability. In the future 6G ecosystem, Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs) have vital importance in providing global connectivity thus improving service availability, especially in rural and remote areas. The interest in NTNs has significantly grown in recent years, mainly motivated by their key capability to provide access to any service anytime and anywhere owing to the broad coverage area (i.e., footprint) or to satellite constellations that ensure global connectivity also where it is not convenient to install terrestrial base stations. The NTN may be an excellent candidate to provide 6G services since it may overcome the limitations of the terrestrial network (TN) with which it may be effectively integrated. However, many innovative services require the transmission of sensitive information and satellites are vulnerable to possible security attacks. Hence, forwarding such sensitive data across LEO satellite constellations could be risky from the point of view of users’ privacy, data integrity, and data confidentiality. In this paper, we discuss the challenging issue of providing reliable data delivery over LEO-based satellite networks. Specifically, requirements, challenges, and enabling solutions for performing secure routing in NTNs will be discussed and analyzed.