On the Rate Control and Information Exchange for Optimizing Data Transfers in IPNs

Recently, the growing of deep space explorations has attracted notable interests on interplanetary network (IPN), which is the key infrastructure for communications across vast distances in the solar system. However, the unique characteristics of IPN pose numerous unexplored challenges for interplanetary data transfers (IP-DTs), i.e., the challenges that existing schemes developed for Earth-based networks are ill-equipped to handle. To address these challenges, we first propose a novel distributed algorithm that leverages the Lyapunov optimization to jointly optimize the routing, scheduling and rate control of IP-DTs at each node. Specifically, our proposal adaptively optimizes the data-rate and bundle scheduling at each output port of a node, significantly improving the end-to-end (E2E) latency and delivery ratio of IP-DTs under a long-term energy constraint. Then, we further explore the heterogeneity of IPN to introduce limited state information exchange among nodes, and devise mechanisms for generating and disseminating state messages to facilitate timely adjustments of routing and scheduling schemes in response to unexpected link disruptions and traffic surges. Simulations verify the advantages of our proposal over the state-of-the-arts.