Benefits of using mobile ad-hoc network protocols in federated satellite systems for polar satellite missions

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.The Operational Network of Individual Observation Nodes (ONION) project evaluated the benefits of applying Distributed Satellite System (DSS) architectures to Earth Observation. One of its outcomes is the identification of Arctic services as top priority current user needs that require near-realtime observations. Using Inter-Satellite Communications (ISC) capabilities, a Federated Satellite System (FSS) can establish a win-win collaboration between two spacecrafts to provide these services. However, as a FSS is established during the contact between two satellites, the service duration is limited. Therefore, the Internet of Satellites (IoSat) paradigm promotes the use of multi-hop sporadic networks to deploy FSS. In this context, the routing protocol (which identifies routes between a source-destination pair) becomes crucial. One of the most extended networks is the Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET), in which nodes are constantly moving and changing the network topology. In principle, applying MANET technologies in the IoSat context would provide self-organization, self-configuration, and flexibility to satellite systems. The Optimized Link-State Routing (OLSR) protocol is the predominant solution in MANET, because it quickly reacts against topology changes. This article aims at studying the benefits of using satellite networks with MANET solutions (e.g. OLSR) for polar satellite missions. The results presented in this article demonstrate that the access time is significantly improved, and thus these new Arctic services can be achieved.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Internet of Satellites (IoSat): analysis of network models and routing protocol requirements

The space segment has been evolved from monolithic to distributed satellite systems. One of these distributed systems is called the federated satellite system (FSS) which aims at establishing a win-win collaboration between satellites to improve their mission performance by using the unused on-board resources. The FSS concept requires sporadic and direct communications between satellites, using inter satellite links. However, this point-to-point communication is temporal and thus it can break existent federations. Therefore, the conception of a multi-hop scenario needs to be addressed. This is the goal of the Internet of satellites (IoSat) paradigm which, as opposed to a common backbone, proposes the creation of a network using a peer-to-peer architecture. In particular, the same satellites take part of the network by establishing intermediate collaborations to deploy a FSS. This paradigm supposes a major challenge in terms of network definition and routing protocol. Therefore, this paper not only details the IoSat paradigm, but it also analyses the different satellite network models. Furthermore, it evaluates the routing protocol candidates that could be used to implement the IoSat paradigm.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Internet of Satellites (IoSat): analysis of network models and routing protocol requirements

The space segment has been evolved from monolithic to distributed satellite systems. One of these distributed systems is called the federated satellite system (FSS) which aims at establishing a win-win collaboration between satellites to improve their mission performance by using the unused on-board resources. The FSS concept requires sporadic and direct communications between satellites, using inter satellite links. However, this point-to-point communication is temporal and thus it can break existent federations. Therefore, the conception of a multi-hop scenario needs to be addressed. This is the goal of the Internet of satellites (IoSat) paradigm which, as opposed to a common backbone, proposes the creation of a network using a peer-to-peer architecture. In particular, the same satellites take part of the network by establishing intermediate collaborations to deploy a FSS. This paradigm supposes a major challenge in terms of network definition and routing protocol. Therefore, this paper not only details the IoSat paradigm, but it also analyses the different satellite network models. Furthermore, it evaluates the routing protocol candidates that could be used to implement the IoSat paradigm.Peer Reviewe

Benefits of using mobile ad-hoc network protocols in federated satellite systems for polar satellite missions

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.The Operational Network of Individual Observation Nodes (ONION) project evaluated the benefits of applying Distributed Satellite System (DSS) architectures to Earth Observation. One of its outcomes is the identification of Arctic services as top priority current user needs that require near-realtime observations. Using Inter-Satellite Communications (ISC) capabilities, a Federated Satellite System (FSS) can establish a win-win collaboration between two spacecrafts to provide these services. However, as a FSS is established during the contact between two satellites, the service duration is limited. Therefore, the Internet of Satellites (IoSat) paradigm promotes the use of multi-hop sporadic networks to deploy FSS. In this context, the routing protocol (which identifies routes between a source-destination pair) becomes crucial. One of the most extended networks is the Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET), in which nodes are constantly moving and changing the network topology. In principle, applying MANET technologies in the IoSat context would provide self-organization, self-configuration, and flexibility to satellite systems. The Optimized Link-State Routing (OLSR) protocol is the predominant solution in MANET, because it quickly reacts against topology changes. This article aims at studying the benefits of using satellite networks with MANET solutions (e.g. OLSR) for polar satellite missions. The results presented in this article demonstrate that the access time is significantly improved, and thus these new Arctic services can be achieved.Peer Reviewe

Design and optimization of a polar satellite mission to complement the Copernicus System

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.The space industry is currently witnessing two concurrent trends: the increased modularity and miniaturization of technologies and the deployment of constellations of distributed satellite systems. As a consequence of the first trend, the relevance of small satellites in line with the “cheaper and faster” philosophy is increasing. The second one opens up completely new horizons by enabling the design of architectures aimed at improving the performance, reliability, and efficiency of current and future space missions. The EU H2020 ONION project (“Operational Network of Individual Observation Nodes”) has leveraged on the concept of Fractionated and Federated Satellite Systems (FFSS) to develop and design innovative mission architectures resulting in a competitive advantage for European Earth Observation (EO) systems. Starting from the analysis of emerging needs in the European EO market, the solutions to meet these needs are identified and characterized by exploring FFSS. In analogy with terrestrial networks, these systems envision the distribution of satellite functionalities amongst multiple cooperating spacecrafts (nodes of a network), possibly independent, and flying on different orbits. FFSS are considered by many as the future of spacebased infrastructures, as they offer a pragmatic, progressive, and scalable approach to improve existing and future space missions. This work summarizes the main results of the ONION project and the high-level design of the Marine Weather Forecast mission for polar regions.Peer Reviewe