This project focuses on a study and development of a disruption-/delay-tolerant networking (DTN) architecture and protocols to provide Internet-type of data delivery services in a challenging communications environment such as in space and solar system.
Dr. Ruhai Wang, Professor, Phillip M. Drayer Department of Electrical Engineering
It has been a few decades that the space agency works on space Internet and interplanetary Internet to automate reliable and efficient space communications using networking technologies. The space communications, especially deep-space communications among planets in solar system, are characterized by an extremely long propagation delay, random and lengthy link disruptions, and lossy data links. The idea of DTN is potentially an effective approach to handle the inevitable long delays, link disconnections and frequent data losses inherent in space and solar system internetwork (SSI). The research team of this project, under close collaborations with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology, works on development and analysis of the DTN architecture and protocols for reliable data delivery in space Internet and SSI. In additional to the development of a theoretical framework, a series of extensive experiments are conducted using a PC-based testbed infrastructure to validate the framework and to evaluate the performance.