GRIMM: A Locator/Identifier Split-Based Mobility Management Architecture for LEO Satellite Network

Abstract

As a complement part of terrestrial networks, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite network plays an important role in providing network services for its low end-to-end delay and efficient frequency spectrum utilization. However, the frequent handover occurrences of Ground-Satellite Links (GSLs) pose great challenges on the mobility management in LEO satellite network. Due to the differences between satellite and terrestrial network in topology, processing power and links, the application of current IP mobility solutions to satellite network has some drawbacks which leads to the non-optimal routing. Base on a comprehensive analysis on the limitations of current IP mobility solutions in satellite network, this paper proposes GRIMM, a gateway based regional mobility management architecture for satellite network based on Locator/Identifier split. The coverage of the satellite system is divided into regions according to the distribution of terrestrial gateways. Each gateway realizes a localized location management for terminals within respective region, and global location management is achieved through the synchronization among all gateways. GRIMM avoids the non-optimal routing and achieves efficiency. Both theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the proposed mobility management architecture can achieve a greatly reduced management cost on Inter-Satellite Links (ISLs) while keeping comparable latency in transmission.