Which Transport Protocol for Hybrid Terrestrial and Satellite Systems?

Abstract

Satellite systems will complement terrestrial networks where the network could not be deployed for technical or economical reasons. Moreover, the natural broadcasting capacity of satellite networks makes it a good companion to terrestrial networks. Then, future services will be deployed over networks that combine terrestrial and satellite systems. The infrastructure heterogeneity could be problematic, for instance because of the delays variety. This article presents the problem from the point of view of the transport layer, the layer directly connected to the application, and compares several solutions to help future service developers using such network configuration.