A buffer-limited maximum throughput routing algorithm for satellite network

Abstract

Satellite network has played an important role in the future global network, due to its advantages of global coverage and short round-trip time (RTT). Its characteristic of intermittent connection causes no-existence of end-to-end path in general in Disruption Tolerant Network (DTN), and thus the store-carry-forward mechanism is adopted. However, the store-carry-forward routing does not consider the buffer constraint on nodes, and thus a novel routing scheme should be designed for such scenario. In this paper, a novel model based on time-varying graph (TVG) is devised, which keeps the richness of the original DTN information. Based on early-connect-early-select path mechanism, we design the labeling algorithm for DTN (LAD) under buffer constraint to maximize the network throughput. Numerical simulation shows that the proposed mechanism can effectively achieve better throughput performance than the algorithm which selects path randomly.