Delay- and disruption-tolerant routing algorithms to support human activity on mars

Abstract

Deep-space activity is expected to increase rapidly in the coming decades. Most notably, crewed missions to Mars will take place. With humans venturing light minutes away from Earth for the first time, communication becomes challenging. Humans have specific communication needs that become difficult to support in deep space where large propagation delays, high error rates, and intermittent connections are prevalent. Delay- and disruption-tolerant networking (DTN) and the Bundle Protocol provide a reliable communication solution in such challenging environments. The overall performance of DTN protocols is highly dependent on their routing algorithms.

With Mars being humanity’s next target in our exploration of the Solar System, this study deals with finding and examining the most suitable routing protocols in the context of Earth-Mars communication. Realistic scenarios of space missions are constructed to enable the comparison of various DTN routing algorithms in simulation.

Routing algorithm performance is analysed, and an enhancement to Contact Graph Routing (CGR) is proposed to address a deficiency of the algorithm, improving routing performance in networks featuring parallel channels.