Minimal Energy Broadcast for Delay-Bounded Applications in Satellite Networks

Broadcast is a fundamental operation in satellite networks. It is frequently used for satellites' self-organization, routing discovery, coordination, and collaboration. Meanwhile, many satellite network applications require that a broadcast message from a source node must be received by all the other nodes within a given delay bound. In this paper, we study the delay bounded and minimal energy broadcast problem in satellite networks. The broadcast routing problem is challenging in satellite networks due to highly dynamic change and intermittent connectivity of the network. To solve this problem, we propose an algorithm that is based on the model of multi-power level multi-transmission space-time graph. The algorithm repeatedly finds the most energy efficient 'caterpillars' in the graph, and merges these caterpillars into an energy efficient broadcast tree. Simulations have been conducted in real satellite constellations and the results show that our proposed scheme can achieve significant energy saving for broadcast in satellite networks, compared with other existing methods.