Introducing Contact Plan Designer: A Planning Tool for DTN-Based Space-Terrestrial Networks

Either by resource-constrained communication systems, high signal propagation delay, or planet occlusion, space-terrestrial networks can neither expect a continuous nor instantaneous end-to-end connectivity. However, episodes of communications can be precisely computed based on orbital elements and then imprinted in contact plans to optimize Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) routing solutions. In this work, we present the first prototype of Contact Plan Designer, a tool conceived not only to generate accurate contact plans but also to fine-tune them, resolve future resource conflicts and analyze or iterate over expected network metrics.