RCLTP: A rateless coding-based Licklider transmission protocol in space delay/disrupt tolerant network

Current space delay/disruption tolerant network architectures generally employ primary automatic retransmission request mechanism for reliable transport of application data. These architectures have obvious inefficiency over a long-haul, deep-space communication link because of frequent acknowledgments. In this paper, we propose a rateless coding-based space DTN transport protocol, named RCLTP, which integrates rateless erasure codes with ignorable retransmissions into the Licklider transmission protocol. As an underlying transport layer protocol in space DTN stack, RCLTP delivers data bundle redundantly to the next endpoint by stochastically interweaving the segments of it. Once the receiver of next-hop endpoint receives enough number of encoded segments, the bundle can be recovered accurately. Performance analyses and evaluations are given under the communication scenario from the Mars to the Earth. The evaluation results show that RCLTP shortens the file delivery time, improves the goodput performance and reduces the storage occupancy of DTN nodes.