Distributed Delay Tolerant Protocol

A cubesat is a very small, low cost, artificial satellite designed for space research purposes, very popular in the academic community. The ISTsat-1 is the first cubesat being developed in Instituto Superior Tecnico (IST)[1], with a IU size (103cm cube). In space, communication links are typically unstable, with high delays and low throughputs and where disruptions can be frequent. This motivated the creation of Delay/Disruptive Tolerant Network (DTN) protocols, a concept designed to deal with the characteristic problems of disruptive environments. However, even with DTN, the transmission of big data files can be difficult. This is specially true in the case of cubesats, working typically in Low Earth Orbits (LEO), which suffer from very long disruptions periods with the Ground Stations (GS) on Earth. In this project we intend to create an enhanced solution, a distributed DTN protocol capable of performing normal DTN tasks, but in a manner where a single transmission can be distributed over different GS, thus increasing the number of links, reducing the disruption time periods and increasing the much needed performance of space transmissions.