Modeling software defined satellite networks using queueing theory

© 2017 IEEE. Existing satellite communication has a low efficiency due to the inherent defects of the traditional design, i.e., coarsegrained control, and long configuration delay. In some previous work, researchers developed Software Defined Satellite Networks (SDSN). We reconsidered many characteristics equipped in satellite links, and deployed SDSN in the prototype by leveraging Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) and OpenFlow. However, it is necessary to develop a theoretical tool for this new network architecture to evaluate its performance. In this paper, we propose such an analytical model for SDSN using the queueing model. In particular, the Jackson's theorem is adopted to model the communication between a controller and forwarding nodes, and the store-and-forward process. The comparisons between the numerical and experimental results indicate that the proposed model is able to accurately evaluate the performance of SDSN, and will provide great benefits for the further related researches.