There is significant interest in deploying the Internet protocol in space. A number of NASA-funded projects are studying the possible use of Internet technologies and protocols to support all aspects of data communication, including handover, with spacecraft. A spacecraft or a constellation of spacecrafts containing Earth observing sensing equipment form a sensor web which has to be handed off between ground stations. Consequently, researchers at NASA and University of Oklahoma are developing a new handover scheme, called Seamless IP-diversity based Generalized Mobility Architecture (SIGMA). Although the results from simulation and laboratory prototyping have shown very promising performance of SIGMA, its performance in the real space environment has yet to be studied.
The objective of this project is to investigate a number of implementation issues of SIGMA for space missions, and evaluate SIGMA on an experimental satellite network to make it ready for space flight missions. Implementation issues to be investigated include survivability, scalability, power awareness, security, and networks in motion using simulation and laboratory prototype testbeds. Evaluation in an experimental satellite involves testing SIGMA (in conjunction with NASA, Cisco and Surrey Satellite Technologies) on the experimental UK-DMC (Disaster Monitoring Satellite). The results of this project will be directly applicable to a number of NASA projects involved in sensing the Earth's environment using Internet protocol in space. This is a three-year project with entry and exit TRLs of 3/5 and 5/6, respectively. |