Network Monitor and Control of Disruption-Tolerant Networks

2009 First International Conference on Advances in Satellite and Space Communications, 2009

In October and November of 2008, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory installed and tested essential elements of Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) technology on the Deep Impact spacecraft. This experiment, called Deep Impact Network Experiment (DINET), was performed in close cooperation with the EPOXI project which has responsibility for the spacecraft. During DINET some 300 images were transmitted from the JPL nodes to the spacecraft. Then they were automatically forwarded from the spacecraft back to the JPL nodes, exercising DTN's bundle origination, transmission, acquisition, dynamic route computation, congestion control, prioritization, custody transfer, and automatic retransmission procedures, both on the spacecraft and on the ground, over a period of 27 days. All transmitted bundles were successfully received, without corruption. The DINET experiment demonstrated DTN readiness for operational use in space missions. This activity was part of a larger NASA space DTN development program to mature DTN to flight readiness for a wide variety of mission types by the end of 2011. This paper describes the DTN protocols, the flight demo implementation, validation metrics which were created for the experiment, and validation results.

2010 IEEE Aerospace Conference, 2010

The University of Colorado is working with NASA to extend Earth's internet into outer space and across the solar system. The new networking technology is called Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN), and is being tested on the International Space Station. DTN will enable NASA and other space agencies around the world to better communicate with international fleets of spacecraft that will be used to explore the moon and Mars. This technology is evolving into an Interplanetary Internet.

Mobile Lightweight …, 2009

As the number and complexity of space missions increases, space communications enter a new era, where internetworking gradually replaces or assists traditional telecommunication protocols. The Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) architecture has recently emerged as a communication system for challenged networks, originally designed for the Interplanetary Internet. In the context of our project with ESA called "Extending Internet into Space -ESA DTN Testbed Implementation and Evaluation" we intend to deploy a distributed, flexible and scalable DTN testbed for space communications. The testbed will provide the supportive infrastructure for the design and evaluation of space-suitable DTN protocols, architectures, and routing policies to allow efficient deep-space communications. Throughout the project, we will demonstrate the operational capabilities of the DTN protocols in space; design and evaluate novel transport protocols and architectures for reliable data transfer in space; and investigate routing algorithms that comply with ESA's policies and resource status.

Proceedings of the Third Ieee International Conference on Space Mission Challenges For Information Technology Volume 00, 2009

The Interplanetary Overlay Network (ION) software at JPL is an implementation of Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) which has been proposed as an interplanetary protocol to support space communication. The JPL Deep Impact Network (DINET) is a technology development experiment intended to increase the technical readiness of the JPL implemented ION suite. The DINET Experiment Operations Center (EOC) developed by JPL's Protocol Technology Lab (PTL) was critical in accomplishing the experiment. EOC, containing all end nodes of simulated spaces and one administrative node, exercised publish and subscribe functions for payload data among all end nodes to verify the effectiveness of data exchange over ION protocol stacks.

2010

The international space community has begun to recognize that the established model for management of communications with spacecraft -commanded data transmission over individual pair-wise contacts -is operationally unwieldy and will not scale in support of increasingly complex and sophisticated missions such as NASA's Constellation project. Accordingly, the international Inter-Agency Operations Advisory Group (IOAG) i chartered a Space Internetworking Strategy Group (SISG), which released its initial recommendations in a November 2008 report. The report includes a recommendation that the space flight community adopt Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) to address the problem of interoperability and communication scaling, especially in mission environments where there are multiple spacecraft operating in concert. This paper explores some of the issues that must be addressed in implementing, deploying, and operating DTN as part of a multi-mission, multi-agency space internetwork as well as benefits and future operational scenarios afforded by DTN-based space internetworking.

Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, 2010

In the framework of the so called InterPlaNetary (IPN) Internet, the paper surveys possible advanced communications and networking solutions applied by a specific IPN node architecture. The proposed solutions have been preliminarily evaluated by using the ns2 simulator by considering possible network status changes due to the nodes' movements, typical in the deep space scenario. In particular, the performance study on one hand highlights the role of the Multicast and, on the other hand, it shows the effects of new possible control approaches such as the dynamic Link Selection in the IPN network. The performance study represents the main paper contribution.

2016

Disruption-tolerant networking (DTN) is an approach to networks that can withstand drops in connectivity and long transmit times. One important application of DTN is an interplanetary Internet among the numerous spacecraft in the Solar System. The Interplanetary Overlay Network (ION) is an implementation of DTN developed at JPL. To allow for network monitoring, ION nodes write status outputs to local files and stdout. Previously, ION network monitoring was done by remotely viewing each node’s status outputs in terminal windows, which quickly became cumbersome for large networks. In this project, we prototyped a more effective system for monitoring ION networks. First, each node sends its status outputs to a remote machine via TCP. Then, an application on the remote machine reads the status outputs from TCP, stores them in a database, and displays them in a flexible, user-friendly graphical user interface. The application was built using Logstash (log pipeline), Elasticsearch (databa...

Proceedings of the IEEE, 2000

Applications of DTN for future satellite networks are discussed in this paper, as well as the relationship between DTN and quality of service (QoS).

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Space Communications and Navigation office (SCaN) has commissioned a series of trade studies to define a new architecture intended to integrate the three existing networks that it operates, the Deep Space Network (DSN), Space Network (SN), and Near Earth Network (NEN), into one integrated network that offers users a set of common, standardized, services and interfaces. The integrated monitor and control architecture utilizes common software and common operator interfaces that can be deployed at all three network elements. This software uses state-of-the-art concepts such as a pool of re-programmable equipment that acts like a configurable software radio, distributed hierarchical control, and centralized management of the whole SCaN integrated network. For this trade space study a model-based approach using SysML was adopted to describe and analyze several possible options for the integrated network monitor and control architecture. This model was used to refine the design and to drive the costing of the four different software options. This trade study modeled the three existing self standing network elements at point of departure, and then described how to integrate them using variations of new and existing monitor and control system components for the different proposed deployments under consideration. This paper will describe the trade space explored, the selected system architecture, the modeling and trade study methods, and some observations on useful approaches to implementing such model based trade space representation and analysis.

SpaceOps 2008 Conference, 2008

The Interplanetary Network Directorate (IND) of NASA's Deep Space Mission System (DSMS) program identified several trends in future space exploration missions that pose new challenges for multi-mission telecommunications and navigation systems, such as: increasing number of communication links and relays, 1000-fold increase in data volumes, and growing complexity in end-to-end communications (including disruption of links). Automation and demand access are among the proposed concepts/technologies to meet these challenges. Currently, most interplanetary telecommunication systems require human intervention for command and control. However, considering the range from near Earth to deep space missions, combined with the increase in the number of nodes and advancements in processing capabilities, the benefits from communication autonomy will be immense. Likewise, greater mission science autonomy brings the need for unscheduled, unpredictable communication and network routing. While the terrestrial Internet protocols are highly developed their suitability for space exploration has been questioned. JPL has developed the Multi-mission Advanced Communications Hybrid Environment for Test and Evaluation (MACHETE) tool to help characterize network designs and protocols. The results will allow future mission planners to better understand the trade offs of communication protocols. This paper discusses various issues with interplanetary network and simulation results of interplanetary networking protocols.