Temporospatial SDN for Aerospace Communications
Venue
AIAA SPACE 2015 Conference and Exposition, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (2016)
Publication Year
2016
Authors
Brian Barritt, Wesley Eddy
BibTeX
Abstract
This paper describes the development of new methods and software leveraging
Software Defined Networking (SDN) technology that has become common in terrestrial
networking. We are using SDN to improve the state-of-the-art in design and
operation of aerospace communication networks. SDN enables the implementation of
services and applications that control, monitor, and reconfigure the network layer
and switching functionality. SDN provides a software abstraction layer that yields
a logically centralized view of the network for control plane services and
applications. Recently, new requirements have led to proposals to extend this
concept for Software-Defined Wireless Networks (SDWN), which decouple radio control
functions, such as spectrum management, mobility management, and interference
management, from the radio data-plane. By combining these concepts with
high-fidelity modeling of predicted mobility patterns and wireless communications
models, we can enable SDN applications that optimally and autonomously handle
aerospace network operations, including steerable beam control, RF interference
mitigation, and network routing updates. This approach is specifically applicable
to new constellation designs for LEO relay networks that include hundreds or
thousands of spacecraft, serving millions of users, and exceed the ability of
legacy network management tools.