Using SDN and NFV to Implement Satellite Communication Networks

Satellite communication system suffers inefficient and inflexible management and configuration due to the traditional system design. To address this issue, in this paper, we present a space-ground integrated multi-layer satellite communication network, based on Software Defined Network and Network Function Virtualization. The framework consists of a Software Defined Network based three-layer satellite network to provide effective traffic scheduling, and a Network Function Virtualization based service deployment method to provide flexible and reconfigurable satellite services delivery. Based on the proposed framework, we implement a prototype with help of Delay Tolerant Network and OpenFlow. Then, we design an experiment scenario and conduct experiments in the prototype to validate the feasibility of the proposed framework and the functionality of the prototype.