Traffic engineering the geostationary satellite constellation networks: An approach

In this paper, we discuss a general multi protocol label switching (MPLS) based traffic engineering (TE) approach for providing QoS based transportation in a geostationary satellite constellation network. As satellite constellation networks become more and more common, with on-board packet processing capabilities providing backbone services to support thousands of airborne and terrestrial terminals, ranging in varying capacities, priorities and quality of service (QoS) traffic, traffic engineering of such networks becomes very important. We discuss the need and the benefits of implementing traffic engineering in such networks to provide efficient services to the user communities. We propose an overall approach for the architecture of the TE from edge-to-edge of the network and present the advantages and issues associated with it.