Agent-Based Distributed Routing Algorithm with Traffic Prediction for LEO Satellite Network

Satellite network, especially low earth orbit (LEO) satellite network, which has advantages of global coverage and short round-trip time (RTT), has played an increasingly important role in the future generation of global communication network. Due to fast velocity, frequent handover and time-varying topology, designing effective routing algorithm for LEO satellite network has always been challenging. An Agent-based distributed Routing Algorithm with Traffic Prediction (TPARA) is proposed in this paper. TPARA algorithm, which fully takes traffic density of the surface of the Earth into account, consists of two parts: traffic prediction and routing decision. In the former, not only the heterogeneity of traffic on the ground is considered, but upcoming traffic from terrestrial terminals is predicted using an improved Kalman filtering as well. In the latter, mobile agents (MAs) are used to explore satellite network and collect routing information. The ultimate routing decision is determined by both current status and future status of satellite network. Simulation results show that, compared with the classical algorithm of ACO, TPARA not only has shorter delay, but alleviates congestion as well.