Network and protocol architectures for future satellite systems

Since their conception, satellite communications have been regarded as a promising tool for all environments where the terrestrial infrastructure is limited in capacity or to take advantage of the multicasting/broadcasting capabilities inherent in satellite technology. Recent advances have seen satellite technology mature to a more prominent role in the telecommunications domain. In particular, the design of novel satellite payload concepts for Geostationary (GEO) satellite platforms, as well as renewed interest in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations have made the integration of satellite and terrestrial networks almost compulsory to ensure new services meet the requirements for high user-rate and quality of experience that could not be achieved using either of the two technologies independently. From this viewpoint, convergence of satellite and terrestrial technologies also requires considering the most recent trends in networking, with special attention being paid to the potential new architectures that have been recently proposed in the framework of Future Internet. This monograph explores the main components of the scenarios above, putting particular emphasis on the networking aspects. To this end, novel protocols such as Multi Path TCP (MPTCP) and networking trends such as Information Centric Networking (ICN) are explored by demonstrating their applicability in some scenarios that deploy both satellite and terrestrial segments. Particular attention is given to smart gateway diversity schemes which advocate the use of sophisticated multi-path transmission schemes to exploit the multi-homing features offered by present day devices. The second part of the monograph is dedicated to content-based networking, which is becoming increasingly popular driven by the pervasiveness of the Internet in everyday life. In this regard, applications to satellite communications are illustrated and the technical challenges to be further addressed are highlighted.