Development of Physarum Routing Algorithm in Low Earth Orbit Satellite Network

Satellites are predicted to be the backbone of broadband internet as a solution for development anywhere in the globe. To meet the challenge, businesses such as Amazon, SpaceX, and Eutelsat OneWeb are vying to launch low-orbit satellites. The extensive installation of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites for the internet backbone of the future poses unique difficulties for the operation of internet networks. The two primary components of the LEO satellite routing problem are figuring out the network topology and creating route pathways based on that information. Some research on dynamic routing protocols such as Djikstra and A-Star have been done, but they are unable to discriminate between similar distances at various latitude and longitude angles in space. This research studied an algorithm inspired by the intelligent slim mold Physarum that searches for food sources to solve the optimal next-hop selection until the destination is reached. Physarum was compared with Dijkstra and A-star in experiments to find the optimal path, lower propagation delay, and routing delay. The simulation demonstrated results that of Physarum contributed to diminishing hop count and routing delay. Remarkably, although there is not much difference in propagation delay caused by increasing hop count, it has a significant influence on routing delay. The Physarum leads 20% over A-Star, even 40.72% over Djikstra. This result will encourage researchers to develop heuristic-based routing algorithms such as Physarum in satellite networks.