Performance Analysis of Three-Layered Satellite Network Based on Stochastic Network Calculus

Multi-layered satellite network is one of the effective methods for dealing with the problem of global network coverage. However, due to its complicated structure and frequent handover of satellites, the signal transmission can be influenced, resulting in the randomness of the quality of service (QoS) of links. This puts forward a challenge to the link performance evaluation. To tackle the challenge, this paper uses network calculus to analyze the performance of inter-satellite links between the three-layered satellite network, which is composed of high, medium and low orbits, and finds that the multi-layered satellite network has a better performance compared to the GEO architecture under low average channel transmission rate. In addition, the performance of three-layered satellite network, which decreases with the inter-satellite distance of LEO increasing, achieves the minimum network delay when the MEO orbital height is about 7000 km. Our analysis results provide reference to the establishment of the inter-satellite links of the three-layered satellite network.