Secure and Reliable Deep Space Networks

Satellite systems have the advantage of global coverage and inherent broadcast capability and offer a solution for providing broadband access to end users. The main thrust of space communications to-date has been to provide reliable communications between ground mission control and a single spacecraft. Little work has been reported on developing a secure as well as a reliable mode of communications in a deep space satellite network. Our main objective is to develop an algorithm that can increase the reliability (such as in terms of minimum energy consumption) and security in the communications path while minimizing overheads. We realize this by assigning costs to every node and links in the path and then optimally selecting a path with the lowest cost that is also secure. We develop an algorithm to efficiently compute a secure and reliable communications path at minimum cost. The proposed approach is compared to a shortest path approach. Simulation results indicate that although the proposed approach yields slightly longer paths, it provides a more efficient approach in terms of energy distribution as well as secure paths.