Title: Ant colony optimisation for the routing problem in the constellation network with node satellite constraint

Authors: Jing Li; Liangjun Ke; Gangqiang Ye; Tianjiao Zhang

Addresses: State Key Lab of Astronautic Dynamics, Xi'an Satellite Control Center, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710043, China ' State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Xian Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710049, China ' State Key Lab of Astronautic Dynamics, Xi'an Satellite Control Center, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710043, China ' Department of Electronic and Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710043, China

Abstract: In the field of satellite communication, there is a trend towards interconnecting satellites into a heterogeneous network. Inter-satellite links (ISLs) are used to transmit satellite management data, such as telemetry and telecommand data, as well as application data. The ground stations act as a management entity, which are connected with node satellites. This paper considers a routing problem with the aim of combining the satellite network with ground station management network to make integrated planning under the node satellite constraint. Based on the characteristic of the routing problem, ant colony optimisation is adopted to solve it. Two solution construction methods, i.e., the sequential method and concurrent method, are proposed. Experimental results on real data show that the concurrent ACO algorithm is better, and it can provide better data transmitting bandwidth of ISLs and save ground station management resources, which makes the algorithm suitable for real requirements.

Keywords: satellite network; inter-satellite links; ISLs; routing; network management; node satellite.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIC.2017.087919

International Journal of Bio-Inspired Computation, 2017 Vol.10 No.4, pp.267 - 274

Received: 07 Apr 2015
Accepted: 19 Nov 2015

Published online: 10 Nov 2017 *

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