Improving the snapshot routing performance through reassigning the inter-satellite links

This paper presents an inter-satellite link (ISL) reassignment method to optimize the snapshot routing performance for the polar-orbit LEO (low Earth orbit) satellite networks. When the snapshot routing tables are switching in all satellites, we propose to reassign the inter-plane ISLs regularly to improve the quality of the next snapshot. Evaluations indicate that our method can obtain equal-length snapshots regardless of the latitude of polar border, which is superior to the natural partition method. Meanwhile, compared with the equal partition method which is practically used in Iridium system, our method can prolong 82.87% snapshot duration, increase 8.68% inter-plane ISL utility ratio and averagely reduce the delay of 54.57% end to end paths. We believe that our method could be practically and effectively applied in the Iridium-NEXT system.