Secure Satellite Communication
Satellite communications have become integral to many industries and technologies such as global navigation, space telescopes and communications satellites. Recently projects such as Starlink and OneWeb have begun to launch Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite megaconstellations to provide high-speed internet access worldwide. These comprise as many as several thousand satellites, compared to 10-100 in traditional constellations.
These networks raise some novel questions about network routing. Satellites are connected to one another using Inter-Satellite Links (ISLs), leading to a much faster-changing topology than is seen in terrestrial networks. This makes it difficult to run established terrestrial routing protocols. Existing research into satellite network routing has focused on efficiency and reliability, but the work so far has not incorporated resilience to attacks as a key consideration.
The project has developed a model to simulate the networks running over LEO satellite constellations. The model is used to assess the performance of different routing protocols when applied to such fast-changing networks, and test how the network responds to and recovers from attacks.
Please contact the Principal Investigator for further information: