A MAC PROTOCOL FOR COMMUNICATION IN
DISTRIBUTED CONSTELLATION SELF-ORGANIZING
NETWORK
Shuo Liu,Jinchun Gao,Gang Xie, Yuanan Liu,Fan Zhang,Ruian Wu
Institute of Smart Wireless Mobile Information Technology, ISWIT, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications
Beijing, China
ls1991@bupt.edu.cn, gjc@bupt.edu.cn, xiegang@bupt.edu.cn, yuliu@bupt.edu.cn, zhangfan1992@bupt.edu.cn
wra2009@bupt.edu.cn
Abstract
The distributed constellation self-organizing network is a new
area in the development of space technology, which is the
powerful weapon to win the future information warfare.
Communication of information and resources sharing are very
important for constellation internal network. This paper
analyses the architecture of the satellite constellation. We
come up with a new MAC protocol of distributed cluster
communication that based on Master-slave mode conversion
with a consideration of the satellites’ large amount of number
together with its flexible structure and delayed
communicative time. Firstly, as the operation control center
of the whole network, the master is chosen according to the
survival time of the satellite link and the slavers communicate
with the master. Secondly, the analysis of access mechanism,
the stability of the new protocol and design of the frame
format are present.
Keywords: distributed constellation self-organizing network;
Slotted ALOHA; communication mechanism; frame format.
1 Introduction
Comparing to geosynchronous orbit (GEO) satellite, the small
satellites have the following advantages: they have a strong
anti-destroying ability, a high reliability and a strong
adaptability as well as a short development cycle with a low
cost and a high adaptability. The small satellite constellation
has an overall remarkable performance than a GEO satellite.
Small satellites can join or withdraw from a failure or task
requirement at any time, which have high re-configurability,
redundancy, safety and reliability [1]. Small satellite has been
widely applied to formation flight, concomitant satellite and
distributed constellation in modern satellite communication
networks.
Along with the development of space technology, the world's
space powers have carried out on a large scale of the space
information network with satellite as the core, which aims at
promoting its space information acquisition ability. As an
important part of the study for space information network in
the world, distributed cluster network technology has
gradually been paid great attention to. Distributed cluster
network architecture, however, is in its infancy. In order to
make sure it has the external communication ability as that of
a virtual GEO satellite, constellation internal communication
protocol needs to be further studied, as well as information
resources sharing between satellite communications [2].
There are many internal communication mode for distributed
clusters , including the steady laser communication and
microwave communication. Because of the energy
concentration, narrow beam, it's difficult for laser aligning,
and it costs a lot for there are too many small satellites. On
the other hand, Microwave communication is easy to
implement without laser aligning, and the beam is wide, the
cost of equipment is low. Considering the flexibility of
satellites network system construction, master-slave mode is
adopted to form self-organizing network among satellites.
Slavers connected with master by improving Slotted ALOHA
mechanism, and transmission efficiency can reach 80% of the
laser. What’s more, we analyse the stability of the proposed
protocol and the frame format, which has not been researched
before.
2 The distributed satellite constellation self-
organizing network architecture
With the development of the on-board processing (OBP)and
on-board switching in satellite communication systems, and
in view of the specific requirements of anti-interference and
anti-destroy character for the military uses, the future ’ s
military GEO SATCOMS will replace the big GEO satellite
with small satellites constellation that can perform all the
tasks of a GEO satellite. It is quite necessary for information
exchange among constellation.
The small satellite in this paper adopts the master-slave mode
to form a self-organized network. Network control designing
scheme should also be taken into consideration to guarantee
the whole satellite communication system could keep the
independent operating ability even after the network
management center attacked by the enemy. When logging in
to a network,the small satellite select a parent satellite as the
control center of the whole network according to the satellite
link’s survival time, the parent satellite is called the master.
The other satellites communicate with the master as slavers.