Agent-based load balancing routing for LEO satellite networks

Abstract

To ensure an intelligent engineering of traffic over entire satellite networks, a distributed routing scheme for low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks, agent-based load balancing routing (ALBR), is presented. Two kinds of agents are used. Mobile agents migrate autonomously to explore the path connecting source and destination, to gather inter-satellite link (ISL) cost, identifier and latitude of visited satellites. Meanwhile, stationary agents employ exponential forgetting function to estimate ISL queueing delay, calculate ISL cost using the sum of propagation and queueing delays; evaluate path cost considering satellite geographical position as well as ISL cost, finally update routing items. Through simulations on a Courier-like system, the proposed scheme is shown to achieve better load balancing, and can especially decrease packet loss ratio efficiently, guarantee better throughput and end-to-end delay bound in case of high traffic load. Furthermore, results from the implementation complexity analysis demonstrate that with the aid of agent technology, ALBR has lower on-board computation, storage, signaling requirements than other on-board routing schemes.