Design and Analysis of Raptor Codes Based Inter-Satellite Transmission Schemes for LEO Satellite Networks

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks have been identified as a promising solution for providing global coverage and efficient communication services to ground users. However, due to the highly dynamic and time-varying con-stellation topology, as well as the frequent switching of inter-satellite connections, the direct adoption of terrestrial network routing algorithms in LEO satellite networks may result in a deterioration of performance, as they are unable to adapt timely to the dynamic satellite network topology and the changes in traffic loads. This paper proposes an inter-satellite transmission scheme based on Raptor codes (IST-RC), which exploits the distinctive characteristics of Raptor codes to address the issues of packet loss and out-of-order in inter-satellite transmissions. Furthermore, in consideration of the extended propagation delay inherent to inter-satellite links, we propose an inter-satellite transmission scheme based on systematic Raptor codes (IST-SRC) to address the issue of resource under-utilisation in the IST-RC scheme. Theoretical models are derived analyze the delay performance of the proposed schemes. Extensive experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed schemes and validate the accuracy of the derived theoretical models.