Feature Articles: Deep Space Communications
The Routing of
Interplanetary Internet
Min Sheng, Ge Xu, Xia Fang
The State Key Lab. of ISN & Information Science Institute, Xidian University
Email: msheng@mail.xidian.edu.cn
ABSTRACT
The Interplanetary Internet is a next-generation space
network architecture proposed by NASA which aims to
establish a communication infrastructure in deep space
and connect planets and satellites etc. The unique
characteristics in deep space environments such as long
delay and intermittent connectivity make the end-to-
end communication difficult to be implemented. There
have been many routing algorithms attempting to ad-
dress these problems; most of these algorithms have
gained some achievements. The basic concepts of the
Interplanetary Internet routing are presented in this
paper. In addition, we give a detailed investigation on
two typical Interplanetary Internet routing algorithms
MARVIN and SBR, which treat the Interplanetary
Internet routing problems in different aspects.
Key words: interplanetary, routing, deep space
communications.
I. INTRODUCTION
Interplanetary (IPN) Internet, outlined by NASA as the
next-generation space network architecture, is pro-
posed to provide communication and navigation ser-
vices for satellites in future deep space missions, and to
connect the network that can be established on and
around other planets. IPN Internet is an often discon-
China Communications December 2006
nected and store-and-forward ‘network of Internet’
based on a wireless backbone with huge delays and
error prone links. The first application of IPN Internet
may be the “Mars network” [1] which is now being
developed to facilitate the exploration of Mars.
IPN Internet, as shown in Figure 1 (a), consists of
three major types of networks: interplanetary back-
bone network, interplanetary external network, and
planetary network [4].
The interplanetary backbone network provides a
common infrastructure for communications
among the Earth, outer-space planets, moon,
satellites, and relay stations placed at gravitation
ally stable Lagrangian points of planets.
The interplanetary external network consists of
groups of satellites flying in deep space between
planets, clusters of sensor nodes, and groups of
space stations, etc.
The planetary network, which is composed of
planetary satellite network and planetary surface
network, as shown in Figure 1 (b), connects
satellites orbiting a planet and ground stations,
rovers, and mission elements on the planet surface.
This architecture can be implemented at any outer-
space planet. Planetary satellite network com-
posed of satellites which lie in multiple layers
provides relay services between the Earth and the
outer-space planets as well as communication and
navigation services to the surface elements. Plan-
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 Feature Articles: Deep Space Communications

[22]
etary surface network provides the communica- ) can be applied to the interplanetary external
tion links between high power surface elements, networks and achievement of the terrestrial satellite
such as rovers and landers and a power-stable IP network can be applied to the planetary network,
wireless backbone in the planet. It also includes but the routing problem in the interplanetary back-
surface elements that can not communicate with bone network has been a subject of intensive re-
satellites directly. search because of the research challenges posed by
deep space env-
ironments, such as
long delay, intermit-
tent connectivity,
and the high bit er-
ror rates.
There are some
novel routing algo-
rithms for the inter-
planetary backbone
network: routing al-
gorithm MARVIN
[8]
proposed by
(a) IPN internet Archana Sekhar and
SBR [10] by Chao
Chen. MAVIN is a
proactive routing al-
gorithm using the in-
formation of the
planets and satellites
orbits stored in
ephemeris (a table
of the position of ce-
lestial bodies at
specified intervals
of time). The SBR
routing algorithm
routes the traffic of
different types using
(b) Planetary network distinct strategies to
Fig
IPN Internet networks architecture meet their reliabil-
ity requirements.
Because of the hierarchical architecture of IPN There are also many other algorithms attempting to
Internet, special routing algorithms for IPN Internet address the interplanetary backbone network routings.
are needed to realize the end-to-end communication This paper briefly presents some basic concepts in the
in deep space environments. The existing routing routing of interplanetary backbone network and focuses
protocols for mobile ad hoc and sensor networks mainly on two algorithms MARVIN and SBR. The rest
(such as AODV[20], DSR[21] and Directed diffusion of the paper is organized as follows: the interplanetary

64 China Communications December 2006


backbone network is discussed in section 2, including the
challenges of routing in interplanetary backbone net-
work and the description of algorithms. In section 3, the
routing problems and others associated with the plan-
etary network are discussed. Finally, we summarize the
paper in section 4.
II. INTERPLANETARY BACKBONE
NETWORK
2.1 Network characteristics
The routing problem is a critical point in the design
of the interplanetary backbone networks. Because of
the unique characteristics of space environment,
building an interplanetary network poses large
challenges. The main characteristics of the inter-
planetary backbone networks which affect the rout-
ing design are listed as follows [4]:
Long and variable propagation delay. The dis-
tances involved in interplanetary backbone network
are of the order of astronomical units (AU). It takes
about 8 minutes to cover a distance of 1 AU, with
electromagnetic waves, such as RF or lasers. In such
networks, routing protocols most severely affected
are those distributed algorithms, which require timely
dissemination of state. Also, the delay is highly vari-
able over a link, because the actual distance between
the end-points of the link varies due to their movements.
Intermittent connectivity. Links are established
only when a line of sight exists between a transmitter
and receiver. Besides the possibility of their moving
out of range, short term link breaks may also occur due
to some other celestial bodies such as asteroids mov-
ing into the line of sight. Cosmic phenomena such as
meteoroid showers, high radiation levels, sandstorms,
or solar flares may interfere with transmission and
even cause the communication systems to malfunction.
High bit error rates. The long distances in-
volved lead to higher error rates in transmission. In
fact, the bit error rate could even be of the order of
10 -1 on very long distance communication.
Furthermore, burst errors that last in the order of
minutes can also be expected. Therefore, the deliv-
China Communications December 2006
Feature Articles: Deep Space Communications
ery in the IPN Internet is unreliable.
Power constraints. Transmission over astro-
nomical distances requires very high power trans-
mitters and extremely sensitive receivers. However,
most satellites depend on rechargeable solar power
to run their systems. Hence, routing protocols in the
IPN Internet need to be power efficient.
Link asymmetry. The time-dependent nature of
the network topology also causes the deep-space
links to be asymmetric in delay and stability. Finally,
due to application requirements, forward/reverse
channels of deep-space communication links have
bandwidth asymmetry, which is typically of the
order of 1000:1 in spacecraft missions. Therefore,
routing in the IPN Internet needs to address the link
asymmetry property.
Most of these characteristics are unique to the
space communication environments, which make it
difficult to directly use the existing protocols such as
TCP and IP [23].
2.2. Routing problem
Interplanetary routing consists of two major phases:
to route between source and destination backbone
nodes, and to route within a backbone node, that is to
say route within a planetary network (Figure 2).
Fig Interplanetary routing
For convenience, we will give the network model
in the next section.

Network model
The network model, including the graph-modeling,
node, link, edge weight and network traffic is given
in this section.
2.2.1.1 Graph-modeling
The Interplanetary backbone network can be mod-
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 Feature Articles: Deep Space Communications

eled as a timed-graph (t-graph) (Gt ),which can be

represented as Gt =(V,E(T)),where V is a set of verti-
ces and E(T) is a set of edges with time as an element.
The vertices in Gt is called backbone nodes, which
have long haul communication capability and con-
sist of planets and satellites.
A t-graph Gt changing with time can be regarded
as the set Gset= G1 , G2 , G3 , ..., Gn where Gi is called
a subgraph. Each subgraph Gi in a t-graph can be
stable for time duration
Ti . The period after which
the Gi repeats is called a topology cycle.

2.2.1.2 Node

A backbone node consists of a planet revolved

around by cluster of satellites and posed by rovers
and mission control stations and can be regard as an
“Autonomous Region” (AR), whose routing deci-
sion within the region can be made locally. Back-
bone nodes are constantly moving abiding by the
orbital mechanics. This kind of node mobility is
calculable by the knowledge of their trajectory
information such as an ephemeris, which is a table
of the positions of celestial bodies at specified
intervals of time. Hence, at any given point of time,
the position of the backbone nodes can be deter-
mined with high accuracy.
In the model, the backbone node can either be
assumed as a sphere or a point object. If the node is
regarded as a sphere, we must consider the eclipses
(or occlusion) of satellites. The phenomenon of
eclipse occurs when the direct transmission to a
planet is blocked due to the movement of some other
planet into the line of sight, as shown in Figure 3. On
the other hand, if the node is modeled as a point
object, a point moving across the line of sight does
not disrupt transmission.
2.2.1.3 Link
Consider the solar system as a linear vector space
centered at the sun, the position of a backbone node
u at time t is then represented by a vector
originating from the sun. A backbone node v is
reachable by node u and called a neighbor of node u
at time t, if there exists some
(t)
0 that satisfies
Fig  Phenomenon of eclipse
the following condition:
(1)
Where C is the speed of light and L uv(t) is the
reachable range limit between node u and v, as
shown in Figure 4.We associate
(t) with each link
and write it as duv (t), which represents the link
propagation delay from u to v. Both duv (t) and Luv(t)
vary with time. The reachability from u to v at time
t is denoted by luv (t).Hence, equation (1) can be
rewriten as:
luv (t)
Luv(t) (2)
Besides the predictable link failure, cosmic phe-
nomena such as solar flares, meteoroid showers,
or sandstorms can cause temporary link failure.
The occurrence of solar flares can not be accu-
rately predicted. Powerful solar flares can even
cause serious damage to communication systems
on satellites. This transient link break has unpre-
dictable nature.
2.2.1.4 Edge weight
The edge weight is a metric defining the cost of
communication along a particular link, such as
distance, power, and delay. Distance is a good indi-
cator of the propagation delay along the link, and
power usually varies as the square of distance. Delay
is composed of three delay components: 1) queuing

66 China Communications December 2006


Fig  link model
time, 2) transmission delay, and 3) propagation delay.
Queuing time includes both the time waiting for an
edge to become available (waiting time) and the time
to drain messages already scheduled for departure on
that edge. Minimizing delay lowers the time mes-
sages spend in the network, reducing contention for
resources; therefore, lowering delay indirectly im-
proves the probability of message delivery. The
object of routing algorithms is to select a path which
minimizes the edge weight.
2.2.1.5 Traffic
The objective of the IPN Internet is to realize com-
munication among in-space entities allowing large
volume of scientific data to be collected from remote
space exploration sites. The main traffic through the
IPN Internet contains:
Remote control: The command and control
messages sent from the Earth to remote devices at the
exploration sites. The delivery of remote control
messages is time-sensitive and requires high
reliability.
Data delivery: The scientific data delivery from
the exploration sites back to the Earth, which can be
classified into two types with respect to the initiator
and the service requirements. Automatic data
delivery: initiated by the mission devices at remote
exploration site, reporting mission status and some
environmental data typically. Automatic data deliv-
ery is time-sensitive and does not have strict reliabil-
ity requirement.
Controlled data delivery: The earth control
China Communications December 2006
Feature Articles: Deep Space Communications
center actively queries the
mission devices for impor-
tant scientific data delivery.
In this application, the Earth
center is aware of where to
retrieve the scientific data
from and initiates the data
delivery. This type of data
delivery requires a higher
level of reliability.
 Routing algorithm
2.2.2.1 Movement-aware routing (MARVIN) [8]
The fundamental concept of MARVIN algorithm is
that movements of planets is highly predictable,
hence, routes can be calculated in advance and stored
in a routing table for any duration. This greatly
reduces the need for expensive route establishment
and maintenance procedures that potentially con-
sume enormous time and power.
MARVIN algorithm uses a shortest-path Dijkstra
algorithm to determine the shortest route between
any two nodes in the interplanetary backbone network.
At any given time T, the network can be represented
by a t-graph; an edge of the graph which is active has
a cost determined by the following metric: distance,
power or delay.
Over a given period of time, MARVIN finds the
optimal routes between all source-destination pairs
based on a given metric. The shortest-path route
starts at startTime and a route can be used until any
link in it breaks. At the instant a link-break occurs,
the route needs to be recomputed. This process is
repeated for every link break during the period of
concern, between startTime and endTime, as shown
in Figure 5:
Fig Route computations on a timeline
MARVIN provides a method to avoid data loss,
which can be used in anticipated link breaks such as
breaks caused by movement of nodes or eclipses.
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 Feature Articles: Deep Space Communications
Since the volume of data that could be transmitted
before route-break detection can be very large, the
presence of large propagation delays along links
demands a proactive route reconfiguration in inter-
planetary networks.
Let the worst case propagation delay along a route
be dr and the time of the route break be tr , then, at the
instant of the route-break, all the data which had been
transmitted up to dr time units earlier would not
reach the destination and would still be in the pipe
corresponding to the link. Hence, MARVIN adopts
a proactive route reconfiguration strategy whereby
transmission along the link is stopped at tr - dr itself,
and the new route from routing table is chosen.
In this routing protocol, backbone node is consid-
ered as a point object, so the occlusion cause by eclipse
can be omitted. But, the transient link failure which is
cause by cosmic phenomena and has unpredictable
nature must be considered. When a transient link
break occurs, reconfiguration is performed for all
routes which is using the broken link, and an alternate
route is detected, if available. When the broken link is
restored, routes are recomputed with the new topology.
Remark:
The MARVIN algorithm provides a simple idea
about the routing in interplanetary backbone internet.
It is a proactive algorithm that calculates the routing
table in advance and loads it to the communication
system for a long period of time. The advantage of
using a proactive algorithm is that the communica-
tion overhead and the route establishing time are
drastically reduced. However, there is a serious
disadvantage in this algorithm that the routing tables
in all the nodes should be updated when nodes need
to be added to the network, which will lead to a large
amount of resources consumption.
2.2.2.2 Space backbone routing (SBR)
Space backbone routing (SBR) [10] is proposed based
on the hierarchical architecture of the IPN Internet
and specifically addresses its challenges. SBR has
two integral parts: SBR-external (SBR-e) and SBR-i.
SBR-e forwards the control and data messages
68
through the IPN Internet and selects paths for inter-
planetary backbone network. The control and data
messages are delivered in a store-and-forward man-
ner and they may need to be buffered in intermediate
nodes for a considerably long time.
There are two different algorithms according to
the traffic types in the IPN Internet for SBR-e:
Location-Predicted Directional Broadcast (LPDB)
for remote control and automatic data deliver;
Receiver-Initiated On-demand Routing (RIOR)
for controlled data delivery.
A. Location-predicted directional broadcast
(LPDB) [10]
LPDB is proposed for fast and reliable delivery of
remote control messages and automatic data reports.
Paths to the destination are based on the predictable
node locations and reachability information and
used to direct and limit the forwarding area of the
control message broadcast. LPDB uses the flood-
ing method to delivery the messages, but, consider-
ing the expense of network resource wastage and
high power consumption, the broadcast area in
space and time is limited.
Location-Predicted Directional Broadcast (LPDB)
is done independently at each AR node and has two
parts: reference AR path computation and direc-
tional forwarding
A.1 Reference AR path computation
A reference AR path is computed according to the
predictable AR topology at all times and some lo-
cally-available information at the source AR. Given:
A time-varying AR topology Gt =(V,E(T)), AR
links are directed links that describe the reachability
and the associated propagation delay between AR
nodes. Source AR s, destination AR d, and message
arrival time t s , N s is the set of possible AR
neighbors of AR s.
We need to compute a fastest traversal AR path,
which is composed of , the
nodes of the AR path and , the
departure time at the AR nodes on the path.
An extension of Dijkstra’s algorithm in time-
dependent network is used to compute the shortest
China Communications December 2006
 Feature Articles: Deep Space Communications

AR path. The fixed link cost of Dijkstra algo- tion d is computed as and the
rithm is replaced by the sum of message buffer- departure timeline is , then only
ing time and the time-dependent link propaga-
t i o n d e l a y d uv ( t ) . T h e m e s s a g e b u f f e r i n g AR neighbors that lie within the forwarding cone
time is composed of the waiting within time interval can receive a
time for a link to be reachable and the queuing copy of the message.
time waiting for all the lo-
cally-buffered messages to
be serviced. In this
algorithm, local queuing is
taken into account but the
queuing that will be en-
countered when the mes-
sage reaches other nodes in
the path will not be taken
into account. That is to say,
the message buffering
time in the first hop
( ) is equal to
the waiting time plus the
Fig
Directional forwarding
queuing time while it is ap-
proximated by the waiting time for a link to be As shown in Figure 6, if the antenna gain at
reachable in later hop. Hence, different receivers is the same, the forwarding cone
(3) contains the space that is within the v’s transmission
power range Lv and limited within the cone angle
(4)
around the axis from v to d. The cone angle is
(5) calculated by:

(6)
The computed AR path is used just as a reference
to direct the message forwarding. As actual message
delivery can deviate from the pre-calculated time-
line, the AR paths calculated by previous AR nodes
may be obsolete. Therefore, the intermediate AR
nodes update the reference AR path as messages
traverse the IPN Internet.
A.2 Directional forwarding
When an AR node (including the source AR node)
receives a control message or an automatic data deliv-
ery message, it computes the reference AR node path
and then forwards the message limited in space and
time. Suppose an AR node v receives a message at
time t0 , the topological AR path from v to the destina-
(7)
Where is a parameter that controls the width of
the forwarding cone. In order to adjust the forward-
ing cone to the movement of AR nodes in the
message delivery process, is computed by the
predicted location of node vi on the reference AR
path, e.g., the location of vi on the path is represented
by .
A.3 Remark
LPDB can be classified as a special type of location-aware
routing protocol. Its difference from traditional algorithms
like LAR [9] and DREAM [19] is that LPDB obtains nodes’
location information according to the orbital mechanics.
Directional forwarding provides multipath routing near

China Communications December 2006 69

 Feature Articles: Deep Space Communications
the reference AR node path in order to handle link
unreliability and speed up end-to-end delivery.
B. Receiver-Initiated On-demand Routing
(RIOR) [10]
The Earth-controlled data delivery carries scientific
data that are usually unprocessed and very large in
volume. Since the Earth control center knows when
and where this type of data needs to be gathered, the
method of on-demand route discovery initiated by
the sink, i.e., the Earth control center, can be used to
delivery this kind of data. Receiver-Initiated On-
demand Routing (RIOR) combines the reactive and
proactive approach for controlled data delivery that
contains large amounts of scientific data from re-
mote exploration sites back to the Earth and requires
high reliability.
B.1. Route discovery
sink nh delayToSink
sink: destination AR;
nh: one upstream AR neighbor to sink;
delayToSink: delay from the local AR to the sink by
way of nh.
Fig Format of a route entry
The formant of a route entry is shown in Figure 7.
Before the data delivery start, the sink initiates
route discovery by sending out an RREQ control
message to the data source AR periodically at an
interval TRREQ . The delivery of the RREQ message
follows the same LPDB scheme as for other control
message. When an AR node receives an RREQ
message, it initiates periodical KeepAlive request
to the sender, and the KeepAlive’s interval TKA is
much smaller than TRREQ .
Routing tables at the intermediate AR nodes are
built upon reception of the KeepAlive reply messages.
A new route entry is built as follows (Figure 8):

AR Node u periodically send RREQ messages.

Upon receiving the RREQ message, AR node v
reply a KeepAlive message to AR node u. u records
70
the directional link delay dvu from the sending
node v and selects the minimum delayToSink
value Du all entries associated with the same sink
in its routing table.

Node u sends a KeepAlive reply in the reverse
direction , containing the link delay dvu and Du .
Node v then retrieves the information from the
KeepAlive replay, builds a new entry with param-
eters of (sink, nh =u, delayToSink = dvu+Du )
The data delivery follows the information con-
tained in lo-
cal routing
tables and
chooses the
nh with the Fig Build a route entry
minimum
delayToSink value as the next-hop AR (data can also
be forwarded to multiple next-hops for mulipath
routing).
B.2. Route repair
As a data traverses the network, if an intermediate AR
node finds that the nh with the minimum delayToSink
value is not reachable, or it can not receive an
acknowledgement form the nh after a certain number
of retransmission attempts, a link failure to this nh is
detected. In this case, it reroutes to alternate, possibly
longer delay paths in the routing table. If no alternate
path is available, a copy of the data message is sent
back to the previous hop, which may find an alternate
path. Meanwhile, an RREQ message is initiated and
sent to the sink periodically with interval TRREQ using
the LPDB scheme.
B.3. Remark
RIOR is executed reactively according to the appli-
cation requests. Upon detection of link failures,
RIOR protocol will not notify the sender node,
which then restarts the route discovery process, but
it utilizes KeepAlive messages to obtain the up-to-
date link property, so that the updated route entries
reflect more recent delay metrics. Because multiple
route entries to the sink could provide alternate
routing options, new route discovery can be issued at
any intermediate node that encounters link failure.
China Communications December 2006

III. PLANETARY NETWORK
3.1. Planetary routing
Planetary surface network includes high power surface
elements, such as rovers and landers which have the
capability to connect with satellites and surface ele-
ments that can not communicate with satellites directly.
These elements are often organized in clusters and
spread out in an ad hoc manner, e.g., sensor nodes and
balloons. Hence, the routing problem in planetary
surface network is relevant and similar to the terrestrial
mobile ad hoc networks and sensor networks, hence
some of these emerging terrestrial technologies can be
applied to the planetary surface network.
In respect to data delivery in a network experienc-
ing frequent partitioning due to sporadic or constant
disconnectivity, a number of research efforts have
arisen recently:
Epidemic routing [2] relies on “carriers” to carry
messages between disconnected portions of the
network through node mobility. The carriers ex
change messages with other nodes when they meet.
The MULE [17] architecture adds an intermediate
layer of mobile nodes to the existing relationship
between sensors and access point used in typical
sensor network designs. The MULEs are mobile
transport agents with large storage capabilities
and renewable power. They collect data from
fixed sensor nodes and later transfer them to
access points in a store-and-forward manner.
In ZebraNet [18], wireless sensor nodes are attached
to animals, which can be seemed as the sensor and
the MULE mapped to the same device. The sensor
nodes collect location data and send data when
they come in radio range of the mobile access points.
These ideas can be used in planetary surface net-
works for routing during periods of disconnection.
The satellite orbiting a planet can act as gateways
between the interplanetary backbone network and the
planetary network. They also help to build a robust
communication and navigation infrastructure at the
planet. Therefore, planetary satellite network plays an
China Communications December 2006
Feature Articles: Deep Space Communications
important role in supporting the end-to-end routing
between earth and outer-space planet, as well as
between community regions within planetary surface
networks. Some routing protocols in terrestrial satel-
lite IP networks have been proposed to provide global
coverage, similar to the ones used in global satellite
communication systems such as Iridium [15].
3.2. Contact allocation and traffic dis-
patching [10]
For signal reception, omni-directional antennas or
multiple directional antennas with different pointing
angles are used; therefore, a communication entity
can receive signals from different ARs simulta-
neously with differentiating them by their distinct
angle-of-arrivals. But signals from different com-
munication entities in the same AR to the same AR
neighbor collide with each other, for their angle-of-
arrivals are approximately the same; therefore, there
can be only one communication entity in an AR that
transmits to a specific AR neighbor within a timeslot.
Some schedule mechanism is needed to allocate the
next contact toward an AR neighbor to one local
communication entity.
Suppose that the number of communication entity
in an AR is N, the transmission to a specific AR
neighbor can be thought as a queuing model consist-
ing of a single server and N parallel queues, where
the server is the AR neighbor and each queue corre-
sponds to a communication entity. If an AR has M
AR neighbors, the transmission to these neighbors
contains M such queuing models with inter-depen-
dent queue lengths and server working schedules.
1) Contact allocation. A simple policy is Longest
Queues (LQ) which allocates the next timeslot to
the communication entity that can reach and also
have the longest queues associated with the AR
neighbors. The goal for this policy is to transmit
as much inter-AR traffic load as possible, thus to
achieve maximum throughput.
2) Traffic dispatching. For an incoming message
arriving at t, select the communication entity in
the AR as its egress router. The simplest method
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 Feature Articles: Deep Space Communications

for solution is Minimum Waiting (MW) policy: to the border router that is expected to have the
Direct a message to the border router that is minimum waiting time to serve the new traffic.
expected to have the minimum waiting time to In summary, the routing algorithms MARVIN and
serve new traffic. To execute the MW policy, LPDB and RIOR all can make use of the properties of
each communication entity needs to calculate the communication in deep space conditions and solve
expected waiting time to its AR neighbors the main problems in deep space communication such
as long and variable delay but they do not take into
account the characteristics of intermittent connectiv-
V. SUMMARY
ity and the power limitation. Consequently, the rout-
ing design in future lies mainly in designing a routing
This paper presents a detailed description of the
algorithm that can handle the transient link failure
routing problems in Interplanetary Internet and sum-
caused by cosmic phenomena and is power efficient.
marizes the existing routing algorithms, with an
In addition, due to the high bit error rate, the delivery
evaluation for these routing schemes.
in the IPN Internet is unreliable, a better code and
The MARVIN routing proposes a natural method
modulation scheme is needed to improve the SBR.
to solve the routing problems in interplanetary back-
bone network, but only an outline of the routing
thought is given. A further investigation about the APPENDIX
interplanetary backbone network is provided in
SBR-e, which also sheds insights into different rout- Lagrangian points: The Lagrangian points are po-
ing algorithms for different traffic categories, such sitions where the gravitational pull of two large
as control messages, automatic data delivery and masses precisely cancels the centripetal acceleration
controlled data delivery. The LPDB algorithm deal- required to rotate with them. There are five Lagrangian
ing with the control messages is similar to the points in any two large celestial bodies and their
MARVIN in that they both employ the Dijkstra locations are depicted in figure 9. Among them, L1,
algorithm to calculate the shortest path and attain the L2 and L3 are not steady while L4 and L5 are steady.
topology of the network from the predictable loca- A third body of negligible mass could be placed at the
tion information, but they differ in other aspects that Lagrangian points and maintain its position relative
the MARVIN algorithm is a table-driven routing to the two massive bodies.
algorithm while the LPDB employs flooding to
forward the data and a directional antenna to limit the
broadcast area in space and time. Besides, the MA-
VIN takes the metric of distance, power and delay,
while the LPDB only takes the delay as metric.
Totally different from them, the RIOR algorithm is
a sink-initiated algorithm and provides reliable paths
for the controlled data delivery at the cost of a large
amount of information exchange.
The contact allocation and traffic dispatching in
the planetary network provide a good support for the
implementation of interplanetary backbone routing.
The contact allocation distributes the next timeslot to
the communication entity that can reach and also
have the longest queues associated with the AR
Fig Five Lagrangian points in any two large ce
neighbors; the traffic dispatching directs a message lestial bodies and their locations

72 China Communications December 2006


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1
The paper is supported by NSFC Project
(60532060, 60572146).
73