Information Dissemination in Disadvantaged Wireless Communications Using a Data Dissemination Service and Content Data Network

Disadvantaged wireless communications, such as those in fractionated spacecraft systems, need real-time, reliable, and fault tolerant information dissemination from information producers (such as sensors) to information consumers (such as information exploitation, analysis, or command and control systems). Such systems are well-suited to the publish-subscribe paradigm, but cannot afford the large footprint of many publish-subscribe systems and do not provide the underlying high-bandwidth, stable connectivity many publish-subscribe systems assume. Similarly, publish-subscribe systems cannot, by themselves, provide the real-time performance and quality of service needed by many mission-critical and spacecraft applications; they need enforcement and control provided by an underlying network. This paper presents a concept for a dissemination system suited to space-borne platforms that combines a lightweight implementation of the OMG's Data Dissemination Service with a simplified Content Delivery Network. The result is a topic-based publish-subscribe information dissemination service that supports decoupled publishers and subscribers of varying numbers, automated failover, and quality of service (QoS), coupled with a topic-based network that can enforce QoS parameters and efficiently deliver published messages based on the subscriptions registered by consumers.