skip to main content
10.1145/3422604.3425938acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagescommConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

"Internet from Space" without Inter-satellite Links

Published: 04 November 2020 Publication History
  • Get Citation Alerts
  • Abstract

    Buoyed by advances in space technology, several firms are planning satellite constellations to offer broadband Internet service. While these developments are happening quickly, there are also many uncertainties about the design of these networks. A key open question is whether or not they will incorporate direct connectivity between satellites, instead of only ground-satellite connections. We compare the network behavior resulting from the two outcomes of that question. Our analysis shows that inter-satellite links substantially reduce the temporal variations in latency, add greater resilience to weather, and could yield more than 3x the throughput achieved without such links. Thus, whether this one design element pans out could have a large bearing on the performance, reliability, and economics of these networks.

    References

    [1]
    2018. Flightaware API. https://tinyurl.com/zsgd7fq.
    [2]
    Sharad Agarwal and Jacob R Lorch. 2009. Matchmaking for online games and other latency-sensitive P2P systems. In ACM SIGCOMM.
    [3]
    Airbus Defence & Space SAS. 2018. Towards the All Optical satellite communications system. https://nebula.esa.int/sites/default/files/neb_study/1276/C4000117594ExS.pdf.
    [4]
    David Barboza. 2000. Iridium, Bankrupt, Is Planning a Fiery Ending for Its 88 Satellites. https://tinyurl.com/y924ycs8.
    [5]
    Debopam Bhattacherjee, Waqar Aqeel, Ilker Nadi Bozkurt, Anthony Aguirre, Balakrishnan Chandrasekaran, P Godfrey, Gregory Laughlin, Bruce Maggs, and Ankit Singla. 2018. Gearing up for the 21st century space race. In ACM HotNets.
    [6]
    Debopam Bhattacherjee and Ankit Singla. 2019. Network topology design at 27,000 km/hour. In ACM CoNEXT.
    [7]
    David Canellis. 2020. Bezos and Musk's internet-from-space race is back on. https://tinyurl.com/u9h8ezu.
    [8]
    Carlos Carrizo, Markus Knapek, Joachim Horwath, Dionisio Diaz Gonzalez, and Paul Cornwell. 2020. Optical inter-satellite link terminals for next generation satellite constellations. In Free-Space Laser Communications XXXII. International Society for Optics and Photonics.
    [9]
    Sharon Pian Chan. 2002. The birth and demise of an idea: Teledesic's 'Internet in the sky'. https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=20021007&slug=teledesic070.
    [10]
    Mark Claypool and Kajal Claypool. 2010. Latency can kill: precision and deadline in online games. In Proceedings of the first annual ACM SIGMM conference on Multimedia systems.
    [11]
    Olivier L De Weck, Richard De Neufville, and Mathieu Chaize. 2004. Staged deployment of communications satellite constellations in low earth orbit. In Journal of Aerospace Computing, Information, and Communication.
    [12]
    Inigo del Portillo. 2017. ITU-Rpy: A python implementation of the ITU-R P. Recommendations to compute atmospheric attenuation in slant and horizontal paths. https://github.com/iportillo/ITU-Rpy/.
    [13]
    Inigo del Portillo, Bruce G Cameron, and Edward F Crawley. 2019. A technical comparison of three low earth orbit satellite constellation systems to provide global broadband. In Acta Astronautica. Elsevier.
    [14]
    Sandra Erwin. 2019. SpaceX plans to start offering Starlink broadband services in 2020. https://tinyurl.com/y4wbsxuc.
    [15]
    ESA. 2013. Alphasat Optical Communication. https://tinyurl.com/y23vthrs.
    [16]
    ETSI. 2015. Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) Implementation guidelines for the second generation system for Broadcasting, Interactive Services, News Gathering and other broadband satellite applications. https://dvb.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/a171--1_s2_guide.pdf.
    [17]
    Giacomo Giuliari, Tobias Klenze, Markus Legner, David Basin, Adrian Perrig, and Ankit Singla. 2020. Internet backbones in space. In ACM SIGCOMM CCR.
    [18]
    Greater London Authority (GLA). 2018. Global City Population Estimates. https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/global-city-population-estimates.
    [19]
    Loren Grush. 2020. SpaceX may spin out internet-from-space business and make it public. https://tinyurl.com/qlojlp6.
    [20]
    Mark Handley. 2018. Delay is Not an Option: Low Latency Routing in Space. In ACM HotNets.
    [21]
    Mark Handley. 2019. Using ground relays for low-latency wide-area routing in megaconstellations. In ACM HotNets.
    [22]
    Mark Harris. 2019. SpaceX Claims to Have Redesigned Its Starlink Satellites to Eliminate Casualty Risks. https://tinyurl.com/y5adgwcp.
    [23]
    Jeff Hecht. 2020. Laser Links will link small satellites to Earth and each other. https://tinyurl.com/y9yrazm9.
    [24]
    Caleb Henry. 2020. SpaceX launches eighth Starlink mission, first VisorSat satellite. https://tinyurl.com/y8akwcpl.
    [25]
    Fernando Hernández. 2019. High-speed Internet from space: The Starlink network. https://www.teldat.com/blog/en/internet-from-space-satellite/.
    [26]
    HughesNet. 2018. https://www.hughesnet.com/.
    [27]
    Todd Karin. 2019. global-land-mask. https://pypi.org/project/global-land-mask/.
    [28]
    Simon Kassing. 2020. floodns: temporal routed flow simulation. https://github.com/snkas/floodns.
    [29]
    Ryan W Kingsbury. 2009. Mobile Ad hoc networks for oceanic aircraft communications. Ph.D. Dissertation. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
    [30]
    Mark Krebs. 2016. Satellite Constellation. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170005719A1/en.
    [31]
    Kuiper Systems LLC. 2019. Application of Kuiper Systems LLC for Authority to Launch and Operate a Non-Geostationary Satellite Orbit System in Ka-band Frequencies. https://licensing.fcc.gov/myibfs/download.do?attachment_key=1773885.
    [32]
    Kuiper USASAT-NGSO-8A ITU filing. 2018. https://www.itu.int/ITU-R/space/asreceived/Publication/DisplayPublication/8716.
    [33]
    LeoSat. 2018. Technical Overview. http://leosat.com/media/1114/leosat-technical-overview.pdf.
    [34]
    Jiulong Ma, Xiaogang Qi, and Lifang Liu. 2017. An Effective Topology Design Based on LEO/GEO Satellite Networks. In International Conference on Space Information Network. Springer, 24--33.
    [35]
    Florian Meyer. 2019. A new network design for the "Internet from space". https://tinyurl.com/y86uk8z6.
    [36]
    Mynaric. 2019. Annual Report 2019. https://mynaric.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/AR_2019_EN_Website.pdf.
    [37]
    Mynaric. 2020. https://mynaric.com/.
    [38]
    Dritan Nace, Nhat-Linh Doan, Eric Gourdin, and Bernard Liau. 2006. Computing optimal max-min fair resource allocation for elastic flows. In IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.
    [39]
    Jim Petranovich. 2012. Mitigating the effect of weather on ka-band high-capacity satellites. In ViaSat Inc., Carlsbad, CA.
    [40]
    Saheli Roy Choudhury. 2019. Super-fast internet from satellites is the next big thing in the space race. https://tinyurl.com/y2xpn83s.
    [41]
    Afreen Siddiqi, Jason Mellein, and Olivier de Weck. 2005. Optimal reconfigurations for increasing capacity of communication satellite constellations. In 46th AIAA/ASME/ASCE/AHS/ASC Structures, Structural Dynamics and Materials Conference. 2065.
    [42]
    Kawsu Sidibeh. 2008. Adaption of the IEEE 802.11 protocol for inter-satellite links in LEO satellite networks. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Surrey (United Kingdom).
    [43]
    SpaceX. 2016. SPACEX NON-GEOSTATIONARY SATELLITE SYSTEM. https://fcc.report/IBFS/SAT-LOA-20161115-00118/1158350.pdf.
    [44]
    SpaceX. 2019. SPACEX NON-GEOSTATIONARY SATELLITE SYSTEM. https://fcc.report/IBFS/SAT-MOD-20190830-00087/1877671.
    [45]
    SpaceX FCC filing. 2016. APPLICATION FOR APPROVAL FOR ORBITAL DEPLOYMENT AND OPERATING AUTHORITY FOR THE SPACEX NGSO SATELLITE SYSTEM. https://tinyurl.com/y7mvpdvz.
    [46]
    SpaceX FCC filing. 2017. SpaceX V-BAND NON-GEOSTATIONARY SATELLITE SYSTEM. https://tinyurl.com/kkskns4.
    [47]
    SpaceX FCC update. 2018. SPACEX NON-GEOSTATIONARY SATELLITE SYSTEM. https://licensing.fcc.gov/myibfs/download.do?attachment_key=1569860.
    [48]
    Telesat. 2020. APPLICATION FOR MODIFICATION OF MARKET ACCESS AUTHORIZATION. https://fcc.report/IBFS/SAT-MPL-20200526-00053/2378318.pdf.
    [49]
    Tesat. 2020. http://www.tesat.de/en/.
    [50]
    Liam Tung. 2020. SpaceX's public beta of internet from space service coming by fall 2020. https://tinyurl.com/ybmw8y4f.
    [51]
    Viasat. 2020. https://www.viasat.com/.
    [52]
    Tanya Vladimirova and Kawsu Sidibeh. 2007. Inter-Satellite Links in LEO Constellations of Small Satellites. http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/m_ssc/research/vlsi/intersatellite.html.
    [53]
    Water Encyclopedia. 2020. Global Distribution of Precipitation. http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Po-Re/Precipitation-Global-Distribution-of.html.
    [54]
    Zoran Sodnik, ESA. 2020. Future and Challenges on Optical Communication Terminal Developments: ESA's view. https://tinyurl.com/yd6vjzpg.

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)Stable Hierarchical Routing for Operational LEO NetworksProceedings of the 30th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking10.1145/3636534.3649362(296-311)Online publication date: 29-May-2024
    • (2024)Background5G Edge Computing10.1007/978-981-97-0213-8_1(1-16)Online publication date: 1-May-2024
    • (2023)Divided at the Edge - Measuring Performance and the Digital Divide of Cloud Edge Data CentersProceedings of the ACM on Networking10.1145/36291381:CoNEXT3(1-23)Online publication date: 28-Nov-2023
    • Show More Cited By

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    HotNets '20: Proceedings of the 19th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks
    November 2020
    228 pages
    ISBN:9781450381451
    DOI:10.1145/3422604
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 04 November 2020

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. bent-pipe connectivity
    2. ground-satellite connectivity
    3. inter-satellite link
    4. internet broadband constellation
    5. leo
    6. low earth orbit satellite

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article

    Conference

    HotNets '20
    Sponsor:

    Acceptance Rates

    Overall Acceptance Rate 110 of 460 submissions, 24%

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)270
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)25

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)Stable Hierarchical Routing for Operational LEO NetworksProceedings of the 30th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking10.1145/3636534.3649362(296-311)Online publication date: 29-May-2024
    • (2024)Background5G Edge Computing10.1007/978-981-97-0213-8_1(1-16)Online publication date: 1-May-2024
    • (2023)Divided at the Edge - Measuring Performance and the Digital Divide of Cloud Edge Data CentersProceedings of the ACM on Networking10.1145/36291381:CoNEXT3(1-23)Online publication date: 28-Nov-2023
    • (2023)×Grid: A Location-oriented Topology Design for LEO SatellitesProceedings of the 1st ACM Workshop on LEO Networking and Communication10.1145/3614204.3616110(37-42)Online publication date: 6-Oct-2023
    • (2023)Transmitting, Fast and Slow: Scheduling Satellite Traffic through Space and TimeProceedings of the 29th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking10.1145/3570361.3592521(1-15)Online publication date: 2-Oct-2023
    • (2023)Laser Inter-Satellite Link Setup Delay: Quantification, Impact, and Tolerable Value2023 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC)10.1109/WCNC55385.2023.10119016(1-6)Online publication date: Mar-2023
    • (2023)Interruption Tolerance Strategy for LEO Constellation With Optical Inter-Satellite LinkIEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management10.1109/TNSM.2023.327463820:4(4815-4830)Online publication date: Dec-2023
    • (2023)StarFront: Cooperatively Constructing Pervasive and Low-Latency CDNs Upon Emerging LEO Satellites and CloudsIEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking10.1109/TNET.2023.326016631:6(2559-2574)Online publication date: Dec-2023
    • (2023)Futuristic 6G Pervasive On-Demand Services: Integrating Space Edge Computing With Terrestrial NetworksIEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine10.1109/MVT.2022.322139118:1(80-90)Online publication date: Mar-2023
    • (2023)Satellite Computing: Vision and ChallengesIEEE Internet of Things Journal10.1109/JIOT.2023.330334610:24(22514-22529)Online publication date: 15-Dec-2023
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    Get Access

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Media

    Figures

    Other

    Tables

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media