Routing Design and Experimental Validation on a Satellite 5G Bearer Network

Since Starlink is successfully deployed, low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite network have attracted much attention in recent years. An LEO network with inter-satellite links is a widely-accepted promising shape for evolving to next generation due to its high throughput, ultrawide coverage and low cost in control and management. By supporting 5G (or 6G system in the future) as a space bearer part to bridge far user and the ground core network. such the network can extend the service span and enable space-ocean-territory integration. In this paper, we proposed the architecture of space bearer network in support of 5G mobile service, and design the routing protocol and routing signaling to overcome huge-scale flooding and long-term routing convergence. In addition, we design the coordinated signaling among space bearer part, radio access part and core network to guarantee the consistency of QoS. Through experiment in control plane, we validate our routing design, and the UE-to-UE connection is successfully achieved.