STSR: A Satellite-Tailored Segment Routing Method for Efficient Space Communication

Segment Routing (SR) is of great significance in the evolving landscape of Space-Air-Ground Integrated Networks (SAGIN). However, owing to hardware limitations and bandwidth constraints, directly applying existing SR-related solutions of terrestrial networks to satellite networks faces resource and performance challenges. Thus, in this paper, we introduce a novel framework called Satellite-Tailored Segment Routing (STSR) for satellite networks in SAGIN. We first propose the STSR data-plane protocol to provide lightweight source routing. Then, a routing policy integration scheme is proposed to support routing consistency in SAGIN. Simulation results reveal that compared to SRv6, in the case of 2000 satellites, STSR reduces routing path information in the header by 43.51 % and increases load efficiency by 43%-92%.