Architecture and Network Model of Time-Space Uninterrupted Space Information Network

Space information network (SIN) plays an extremely important role in civil and military applications. However, a specific definition of SIN still remains a challenging issue. Unlike space communication network (SCN), which merely focuses on information delivery, SIN has the ability to process the delivered information and providing corresponding services based on the information, which makes SIN seem to be able to understand information. This paper offers architecture and corresponding network model for time-space uninterrupted SIN. Initially, both physical and logical constitution of SIN architecture are presented with several corresponding constellation designs, which is the fundamental work for setting nodes in SIN. Based on this SIN architecture, a hierarchical autonomous system (AS)-based network model for SIN is proposed in order to manage SIN more efficiently by separating the whole network into several relatively stable ASs. Furthermore, we analyze topology control schemes and network capacity trend of AS-model based SIN. This paper gives the future research directions in the conclusion.