The development and growth of the Internet during the past thirty years has led to demand for and development of Internet services everywhere and over every possible communications medium. This includes the medium of satellite communications. During those same three decades, the growth in use of satellite communications to provide a widely-available wireless communications infrastructure has led to the development of broadband satellite communications using satellite constellation networks. These two technological trends have intersected. Here, we examine networking and internetworking issues affecting satellite networking in complex satellite constellation networks, and determine what is needed in order to support services based on the TCP/IP suite well in satellite constellations. We analyse constellation network topology. Its movement and effects on end-to-end delays experienced by network traffic travelling across the constellation are examined in detail. Analysis of the impact of cross-seam links upon delays experienced by traffic across star constellations shows that the use of cross-seam links is worthwhile. We examine the effects of multi-path routing within the constellation upon TCP communication, and demonstrate the performance advantages of an intelligent flowbased approach to routing in the constellation network. The desirability of implementing IP routing functionality in the space segment of the constellation is shown. The use of IP routing, to enable good support for IP QoS and IP multicast, is shown to be possible. We present an approach to implementing IP multicast within the constellation, evaluating use of a core-based tree algorithm, and outline an architecture permitting IP routing of IP traffic in an ATM-based satellite constellation network, using MPLS. Finally, we present and demonstrate the advantages of a novel method of managing path delay between ground terminals across a rosette constellation with intersatellite links, by using controlled handover to manage surface diversity to provide classes of service to network traffic.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:341382 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Wood, Lloyd |
| Publisher | University of Surrey |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/704760/ |
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