Application Protocols enabling Internet of Remote Things via Random Access Satellite Channels

Nowadays, Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) traffic rate is increasing at a fast pace. The use of satellites is expected to play a large role in delivering such a traffic. In this work, we investigate the use of two of the most common M2M/IoT protocols stacks on a satellite Random Access (RA) channel, based on DVB-RCS2 standard. The metric under consideration is the completion time, in order to identify the protocol stack that can provide the best performance level

Small satellites and CubeSats: survey of structures, architectures, and protocols

The space environment is still challenging but is becoming more and more attractive for an increasing number of entities. In the second half of the 20th century, a huge amount of funds was required to build satellites and gain access to space. Nowadays, it is no longer so. The advancement of technologies allows producing very small hardware components able to survive the strict conditions of the outer space. Consequently, small satellites can be designed for a wide set of missions keeping low design times, production costs, and deployment costs. One widely used type of small satellite is the CubeSat, whose different aspects are surveyed in the following: mission goals, hardware subsystems and components, possible network topologies, channel models, and suitable communication protocols. We also show some future challenges related to the employment of CubeSat networks