A survey: The progress of routing technology in satellite communication networks

Satellite network is an important part in the future communication system and the routing design is always the bottleneck. Since the satellite technology constantly develops and the requirement of ground terminal grows, the routing technology in satellite networks is renovating all the time. In this paper various routing algorithm are analyzed. The routing problems concerning dynamic topology networks, integration with ground segment, QoS guarantee, multicast, multi-layer network design and management etc. are detailed summarized. Considering the development direction of satellite networks, more attention will be paid on the applications of IP technology, handover, the protocols of multicast, cross-layer protocol design and resource management etc. in the future.