Agent-based Dynamic Routing in the Packet-Switched LEO Satellite Networks

This paper proposes and evaluates the agent-based dynamic routing (ADR) in the packet-switched low earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks. There are two kinds of agents, roaming agents and fixed agents. Roaming agents walk randomly around the network to gather the latest link status information of the traversed satellites and at the same time transfer the link status information of the past satellites to the fixed agents of the satellites. Meanwhile, the fixed agents located at the satellites estimate the link cost of the network based on the link status information obtained from the roaming agents and take advantage of the predictable property of the satellite networks to update the routing tables using the HALO algorithm already proposed for the terrestrial networks. Through simulations on an Iridium-like satellite network, the proposed routing mechanism is seen to be able to achieve a balanced traffic distribution across the satellite network, and can especially decrease the packet drop rate, provide better throughput and end-to-end delay bound, thus improve the utilization efficiency of the satellite networks.