Study of a Priority Paradigm for Deep-Space Applications
Manikantan Ramadas, Shawn Ostermann, Hans Kruse · SpaceOps 2006 Conference · 2006
Deep-space presents a challenging environment for communication by exhibiting constraints such as very high signal propagation delays, high channel error-rates, meager and expensive bandwidth availability, etc. Further, a Spacecraft participating in a deep-space mission typically carries a host of scientific instruments- each capable of generating data at different rates coupled with different reliability and timeliness needs for communication. In this paper we present a two-dimensional Priority Paradigm designed for applications operating in this scenario. The first dimension is Immediacy, a measure of how urgently data needs to be delivered; Orthogonal to that is Intrinsic Value, a measure of how reliable the data delivery needs to be. We then study the performance of two candidate mechanisms for implementing the Priority Paradigm policy sought with the two-dimensional priority-paradigm parameters requested: Adapting the FEC mechanism in use and Adaptively varying the packet size in use, for various link error rate characteristics. 1.