LEONE

Low-Latency Command and Control via LEO Satellites

Timeframe

Institutions

• Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST)
• Chair of Networked Systems Modeling, TU Dresden

Team @ TU Dresden

• Christoph Sommer (PI)
• Mario Franke
• Jannusch Bigge

Funding

• FNR (LIST)

Homepage

• https://www.project-leone.eu/

Description

Satellite communications are expected to provide connectivity in areas that are underserved by terrestrial network operators. Given their altitude, Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites are particularly promising for applications that require low-latency communication. However, setting up, operating, and offering data communication services based on such constellations of LEO satellites is quite challenging due to their high mobility, i.e., the communication links have a very limited service time.

The “Low-Latency Command and Control via LEO Satellites” (LEONE) project will focus on a specific research question: how to command and control autonomous vehicles (both ground and aerial) that are operating in areas with no terrestrial network coverage via LEO satellite-based communication?

To answer this question, the project will develop and evaluate new efficient end-to-end network system designs and communication protocols that will consider the characteristics of all intermediate communication links between the ground control center and the autonomous vehicles to be controlled: (1) ground segment to LEO satellite links, (2) LEO satellite to satellite links, and (3) LEO satellite to autonomous vehicle links. The project will integrate existing solutions for predicting the mobility of satellites and vehicles with new networking concepts, such as time-sensitive networking and vehicle-to- everything communication, in order to provide efficient, reliable, and deterministic communication for such integrated systems.

Contributions @ TU Dresden

Our group will focus on extending our Open Source vehicle-to-LEO satellite simulation framework space_Veins, particularly its models of infrastructure elements and 3D obstacles, as well as tuning it for scale and speed, along with a performance study.

Selected Publications

• Darinela Andronovici, Ion Turcanu, Jannusch Bigge and Christoph Sommer, "Cross-Validating Open Source In-Vehicle TSN Simulation Models With a COTS Hardware Testbed," Proceedings of 15th IEEE Vehicular Networking Conference (VNC 2024), Kobe, Japan, May 2024, pp. 172–179. [DOI, BibTeX, Details...]
• Darinela Andronovici, Damien Nicolas, Ion Turcanu and Christoph Sommer, "Demo: Interactive Off-the-Shelf In-Car TSN Testbed," Proceedings of 15th IEEE Vehicular Networking Conference (VNC 2024), Demo Session, Kobe, Japan, May 2024, pp. 267–268. [DOI, BibTeX, Details...]
• Mario Franke and Christoph Sommer, "Obstacle Shadowing in Vehicle-to-Satellite Communication: Impact of Location, Street Layout, Building Height, and LEO Satellite Constellation," Proceedings of 15th IEEE Vehicular Networking Conference (VNC 2024), Kobe, Japan, May 2024, pp. 305–312. [DOI, BibTeX, PDF and Details...]
• Mario Franke and Christoph Sommer, "Toward Space-Air-Ground Integrated Network Simulation with 4D Topologies," Proceedings of 19th IEEE/IFIP Conference on Wireless On demand Network Systems and Services (WONS 2024), Chamonix, France, January 2024, pp. 61–68. [DOI, BibTeX, PDF and Details...]

Software

space_Veins