Data centric, position-based routing in space networks

Envisioned space exploration systems and planned space science missions involve increasingly large number of satellites and surface rovers/sensors communicating for coordinated science operations or for on-demand commanding and/or transfer of data. Current approaches that use static routing cannot scale to large numbers of satellites and spacecrafts of future missions. This requires a dynamic approach that can discover networks and links as they become available and intelligently use them for routing. Furthermore, most of the science missions will be geared towards collecting data using various sensors. Adoption of a data-centric communication mechanism can enable in-network aggregation and processing which help make data forwarding more efficient. In this paper, we briefly describe ASCoT, a routing system for science missions of tomorrow, which a) leverages the predictability of satellite trajectories to effect position-based routing in the space backbone, and b) departs from traditional address-centric communication and uses a data-centric architecture to enable energy efficient and low latency operation in proximity networks. Our simulation study using STK/OPNET shows that ASCoT architecture is viable.