Collaborative Research: Research Infrastructure: CCRI: New: Distributed Space and Terrestrial Networking Infrastructure for Multi-Constellation Coexistence

This collaborative project brings together investigators from Virginia Tech, George Mason University, and the University of Surrey to develop a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) platform that facilitates the research, development, and experimentation with adaptive communications for multi-constellation space network coexistence. The main contribution is SpaceNet, the first-of-its-kind, fully open-source HIL space network testbed that is able to emulate a fast-changing network topology with changing connectivity and latencies, challenging routing, transport protocols, and re-architecting applications.

The testbed will uniquely support multiple networks of distributed heterogeneous platforms in multiple domains, addressing challenges in adaptive communications for multi-constellation coexistence, emulating what has been called the “internet of space things”. Direct connectivity allows for the exploration of how satellites and constellations might interconnect without revealing proprietary information of each constellation, creating the equivalent of interdomain routing for space networks.

Additional capabilities examine behavior in the face of disruptions such as large solar storms. Achieving these new capabilities requires merging lab-based spacecraft hardware with a large-scale state-of-the-art wireless radio testbed to create more flexible and higher fidelity rendering of the satellite links, resulting in a networked HIL development and a testing environment that accurately models the network and dynamics; routing and re-routing data link tables on the fly, scaled to multiply-redundant algorithms and architectures; satellite-like lab hardware for testbed nodes; and virtual nodes and remote access for government, industry, and academic researchers.

The expected outcome is a remotely-accessible, multi-domain network and cybersecurity research infrastructure, and a validated first-of-its-kind adaptive and assured space network communications emulator. In addition, students will be involved in class projects covering technical concepts on space communications, TN/NTN co-existence, and hands-on experiences with SpaceNet.

Project outcomes will be widely disseminated via workshops, tutorials, software repositories, peer-reviewed conferences, and scholarly archival journals. The broader wireless communications communities will be engaged in the design, development, use, and maintenance of the proposed CISE infrastructure.

The project repository will be linked from the proposal and milestones page at https://space-net.org at least through the duration of the project, and will be used for sharing research updates, workshop livestreams, dataset, code, and preprints.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.