Traffic Engineering for Software-Defined LEO Constellations

Abstract

The emerging low earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks are expected to provide the world’s most advanced Internet services. Besides, terrestrial networks are in constant evolution and already moving to embrace the relatively new paradigm of software defined networking (SDN). In this paper, we take the advantages of SDN features and leverage traffic engineering (TE) to enhance the ISL performance in broadband LEO satellite networks. We investigate unicast and multicast TE for SDN-enhanced LEO constellations to empower satellite-based Internet services. In LEO satellite networks, unicast supports ubiquitous network access and provides basic network services, while multicast features superior satellite-based video distribution. For unicast TE in grid ISL networks, we present a simple yet efficient k-segment routing based strategy with segment routing (SR) techniques, which can achieve near optimal max link utilization when compared with the multi-commodity flow solution. In the meanwhile, our solution eliminates routing tables and only imposes little routing information stored in packet headers. For multicast TE, we employ rectilinear Steiner trees (RSTs) to maximize bandwidth saving and exploit obstacle-avoiding rectilinear Steiner trees (OARSTs) to address the contention of multiple multicast groups. Based on RSTs and OARSTs, we propose an effective per-flow management scheme to balance traffic among multiple multicast flows in the presence of limited link capacities. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our approaches on reducing routing information and accommodating more multicast groups.