A Research on Integrated Space-Ground Information Network Simulation Platform Based on SDN

With the development of society, ground communication technologies are hard to meet the demands of communicating at anytime and from anywhere. As a result, the integrated space-ground information network, which connects the satellites with ground stations to provide seamless and efficient global communications, is becoming one of the most important and potential networks for future communications. In the integrated space-ground information network, satellite network is a crucial part, in which problems caused by the dynamics are eager to be solved. To investigate those problems, this paper proposed an integrated space-ground information network simulation platform with STK(Satellite Tool Kit), Mininet and ONOS(Open Network Operating System) to simulate SDN(Software Defined Network) enabled networking devices. We designed a 3-layer(GEO/MEO/LEO) Walker constellation, a topology construction algorithm depending on available times of ISLs(inter-satellite links) and a routing algorithm considering both the processing delay and transmission delay. The simulation results show that the proposed topology construction algorithm could provide a relatively stable topology and reduce the computational resource consumption and the routing algorithm could control the delay of path to improve the quality of service. Indeed, the platform can support the simulation of integrated space-ground network with a good performance in solving problems caused by the dynamics of the satellite network.