Load balancing routing for single-layered satellite networks

The varying population density leads to imbalanced utilization rate of satellites. To ensure an intelligent engineering of traffic over satellite networks, a distributed routing scheme for single-layered satellite network, load balancing routing protocol based on mobile agent (LBRP-MA) is proposed. For LBRP-MA, mobile agents explore route by migrating autonomously. Upon arriving at destination, mobile agents migrate back. On each intermediate satellite, mobile agents evaluate path cost considering satellite geographical position as well as inter-satellite link (ISL) cost, and finally take ISL congestion index into account to update routing tables. Through simulations on the Courier-like constellation, the proposed approach is shown to achieve guaranteed end-to-end delay bound and decrease packet loss ratio with better throughput, which is especially suitable for data transferring in case of high traffic load. Moreover, results of the complexity analysis demonstrate that LBRP-MA can have low onboard signaling, storage and computation requirements. Furthermore, issues of LBRP-MA such as ISL congestion index and cost modification factor are discussed.