Routing algorithms with efficient resource utilization for LEO satellite networks

Recently, a series of researches have been emphasized on developing advanced satellite networks, mostly because of its advantage in providing spaced-based global communication service. But most of these work prefer to focus on the time-varying topologies, large delays and intermittent connections of satellite networks. However, there is another issue worthy of attentions, i.e., the scarcity and preciousness of satellite resources, owing to the shortage of orbit resources and the high cost of launching a satellite. Therefore, it is significantly important to consider the efficient utilization of resources during designing routing strategies for satellite networks. In this paper, we propose two routing algorithms to optimize the number of used inter-satellite links, which will directly improve the bandwidth utilization and save resources for LEO satellite networks. The basic idea is to reduce the number of links used by lower-priority traffic through scheduling them to links used by highest-priority services, and simultaneously introduce the load balancing strategies to control the aggregation of network flow. Simulation results show that with the price of little longer latency and load unbalancing, our algorithms can effectively decrease the total number of used links, and thus improve the resource utilization and save energy for satellite networks.