Titulo Estágio
Heuristic for the Satellite-Terrestrial Communication Routing Problem
Áreas de especialidade
Comunicações, Serviços e Infraestruturas
Sistemas Inteligentes
Local do Estágio
Departamento de Engenharia Informática, Polo II - Pinhal de Marrocos 3030-290 Coimbra
Enquadramento
With the increasing demand for global connectivity and fast Internet, there is a need to ensure communication with stricter Quality of Service requirements. Considering recent developments of space technologies and decrease of operation costs, satellite communications can be used to improve communication latency and coverage [1]. From communication to navigation, there are hundreds of satellites orbiting the Earth with different types of orbits.
Currently, terrestrial and satellite networks are developed and operated separately [2]. A promising architecture for terrestrial networks is the cloud-fog, where an extra layer of devices, closer to the user, is implemented. This allows to decrease the latency and usage of the cloud. However, with the expected number of Internet of Things devices and the need for globalisation, extra factors must be met, such as coverage. Thus, an opportunity to join terrestrial and satellite networks emerges, by including satellite communications in the cloud-fog architecture.
One main issue in communications is routing, especially when different types of devices are considered [3]. There is a need to ensure that the chosen paths satisfy the constraints and, at the same time, minimise some metrics of interest. This is especially important when considering satellite networks, due to their availability. In lower orbits, the availability of each satellite is in the minutes, making it even more difficult to ensure connectivity. Thus, fast and efficient algorithms are of interest.
This work will focus on developing a fast heuristic to minimise energy consumption and latency in Satellite-Terrestrial communications. The student is expected to study terrestrial network architectures, satellites orbits and constellations, and existing approaches to obtain suboptimal solutions to be used in dynamic environments.
References:
[1] O. Kodheli et al., ‘Satellite Communications in the New Space Era: A Survey and Future Challenges’, IEEE Communications Surveys Tutorials, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 70–109, 2021, doi: 10.1109/COMST.2020.3028247.
[2] X. Zhu and C. Jiang, ‘Integrated Satellite-Terrestrial Networks Toward 6G: Architectures, Applications, and Challenges’, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 437–461, Jan. 2022, doi: 10.1109/JIOT.2021.3126825.
[3] J. A. Fraire, O. De Jonckère, and S. C. Burleigh, ‘Routing in the Space Internet: A contact graph routing tutorial’, Journal of Network and Computer Applications, vol. 174, p. 102884, Jan. 2021, doi: 10.1016/j.jnca.2020.102884.
Objetivo
The goal of this work is to develop a heuristic approach to solve the terrestrial-satellite routing problem to minimise latency and energy consumption. For the experimental analysis, different types of satellite constellations, number of devices and topologies will be used.
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 1
- Literature review of cloud-fog architectures and satellite communications
- Familiarisation with mathematical formulations
- Implementation of a preliminary heuristic
- Writing of the intermediate report
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 2
- Development of heuristic for the terrestrial-satellite routing problem
- Experimental evaluation
- Writing of the final report
Condições
The work is to be executed at the laboratories of the CISUC’s LCT group. A workplace will be provided as well as the required computational resources.
Observações
Advisors: Noé Godinho (noe@dei.uc.pt) and David Abreu (dabreu@dei.uc.pt).
Orientador
Noé Godinho / David Abreu
noe@dei.uc.pt 📩