Software Defined naval network for satellite communications (SDN-SAT)

We propose Software Defined Networking (SDN) framework to a fleet of naval ships that relies on multiple satellite communication systems for onboard communication. Our solution addresses practical issues in current shipboard naval networks such as sharing and load balancing of multiple satellite communication links as well as overcoming limited bandwidth constraints. To ameliorate link intermittence and outage, we propose Multi-Path Transmission Control Protocol (MPTCP), which improves end-to-end data delivery by creating several subflows under one TCP session. In our SDN framework, each ship is an SDN switch with multiple SATCOM connections. The management and classification of MPTCP subflows are handled by a remote SDN controller. The cooperation between MPTCP and SDN controller leads to an agile, bandwidth efficient, robust naval network. System analysis and numerical evaluation validate the feasibility and efficacy of our SDN-based solution for such a network.