SERvICE: A Software Defined Framework for Integrated Space-Terrestrial Satellite Communication

The existing satellite communication systems suffer from traditional design, such as slow configuration, inflexible traffic engineering, and coarse-grained Quality of Service (QoS) guarantee. To address these issues, in this paper, we propose SERvICE, a Software dEfined fRamework for Integrated spaCe-tErrestrial satellite Communication, based on Software Defined Network (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV). We first introduce the three planes of SERvICE, Management Plane, Control Plane, and Forwarding Plane. The framework is designed to achieve flexible satellite network traffic engineering and fine-grained QoS guarantee. We analyze the agility of the space component of SERvICE. Then, we give a description of the implementation of the prototype with the help of the Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) and OpenFlow. We conduct two experiments to validate the feasibility of SERvICE and the functionality of the prototype. In addition, we propose two heuristic algorithms, namely the QoS-oriented Satellite Routing (QSR) algorithm and the QoS-oriented Bandwidth Allocation (QBA) algorithm, to guarantee the QoS requirement of multiple users. The algorithms are also evaluated in the prototype. The experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed algorithms in terms of file transmission delay and transmission rate.