QRST: A QUIC-Enabled Robust Streaming Transmission Framework for Ultra Large-Scale LEO Satellite Networks

With the development of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, ultra large-scale LEO satellite networks (ULSLSNs) hold immense potential to provide high-speed and reliable services in future communication systems. It offers substantial promise to meet emerging Internet traffic demands, such as remote real-time applications with stringent delay constraints (deadline). However, the complexity of ULSLSNs is significantly amplified by the satellite mobility, limited bandwidth, and more packet losses. The complex and dynamic network can greatly increase block transmission latency and may further degrade user’s Quality of Experience for real-time applications. To reduce block transmission latency and deliver more blocks before deadline for real-time applications, we propose a quick user datagram protocol Internet connection-enabled robust streaming transmission (QRST) framework deployed in ULSLSNs. This framework comprises four components and mainly involves an adaptive forward erasure coding (FEC) scheme and a deadline-driven block scheduler. The FEC scheme dynamically allocates redundancy based on current network conditions to reduce extra retransmission delay and balance bandwidth overhead. The block scheduler selects blocks for transmission to deliver more blocks before deadline, especially for high-priority blocks. Finally, we implement QRST over the network of Kuiper K3 Shell simulated by NS-3 and living video streaming applications are transmitted. The experiment results show that QRST can significantly enhance the transmission performance of video streaming applications in ULSLSNs compared with other mechanisms.