2010 Second International Conference on Evolving Internet

Internet Satellite Challenges

William W. Wu
Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China
Advance Technology Mechanization, Co.
Bethesda, MD, USA
[email protected]

Abstract— The current extension of communications, transponders, which contains frequency filters, low
embracing terrestrial and space domains, raises a few noise amplifier, frequency translator and high power
legit questions in terms of business model, compatibility, amplifier. From wireless viewpoint, distance becomes
and sustainability. Related to Internet satellites, this important. Satellite distances depend on the following
paper considers the following questions: Who are the US-
based major operational Internet satellite organizations?
orbits: Geostationary orbit (GEO), represented by the
What was the ambitious plan, and why did it fail? What INTELSAT has a distance of 35,785 Km from Earth
are the basic incompatibilities of Internet and satellite surface, while Medium Earth orbits (MEOs) are from
communications, in terms of system philosophy, 10,000 Km to 20,000 Km. Highly Elliptical orbit
operational efficiency, and network architectures? Why (HEO) represented by the Russian satellite Molniya has
are there so many difficulties for practical improvement? Perigee of 1,000 Km and Apogee of 39,360 Km. Low
How to prevent large-scale Internet breakdowns? What Earth orbits (LEOs) are generally below 1,000 Km,
may be the potential solutions? with the exception of GLOBALSTAR, which has a
distance of 1,389 Km. A special case of LEO is the 77
Keywords - Fundamental transmission; satellites satellites IRIDIUM system with 11 satellites in 7
and Internet frame structure; protocol length; orbital plans at the distance of 765 Km.
operational efficiency. Launching satellites is a very costly task compared
to Internet. Satellite communications have much longer
I. INTRODUCTION time delay in space than the terrestrial Internet delays.
For Geo-synchronous orbital satellites, it is about 533
Wireless Internet has been researched, developed, and ms round trip station to station via a satellite. This is
operational foir a few decades. In terms of distance, called single hop of 4 delay units (to and from each
communications satellites are the ultimate wireless. station to the satellite) total 180,000 Km, while the
This paper brings forth the fundamental problems of terrestrial Internet link delays (not counting traffic
transmitting Internet through satellites, either Geo- delays) are no more than 50ms per 5,000 Km.
synchronous, low, or high orbit. Historically, Internet As of last year, the number of commercial
and satellite communications were developed communications satellites around the World in Geo-
independently of each other. Technically, Internet was synchronous orbit was about 279. With or without
primary developed through the idea of fast short packet carrying Internet traffic, the number of U.S.
switching, multiple paths and multiple nodes computer commercial satellite organizations has been shrank
networks, while satellite communications were from 25 in 1996 to less than a dozen. The problems
developed earlier through point-to-point have been due to both economic downturn and lack of
telecommunication principles with limited satellite research and development. For details, see [1] for a
transponders, multi-beam antennas and limited earth future outlook and [2,3] for satellite fundamentals.
stations. For more efficient digital satellite The DoD (Department of Defense) research arm,
communications, long stream of messages are now DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects
assumed. Fundamentally, when they are merged they Agency), led and sponsored works to create a single
are not compatible in terms of cost effectiveness, Internet network. Even it was a defense project, all the
operational efficiency, and optimization. technologies and documents were released to the
Satellite communications are many faceted public, as RFCs (Request for Comments). Many
subjects; basically, they consist of the space segment, papers and books have been written also about the
the ground segment, orbits, and launch vehicles. The Internet; for historical interests and for fundamentals,
space segment consists of a transponder, or a set of

978-0-7695-4185-3/10 $26.00 © 2010 IEEE 31

DOI 10.1109/INTERNET.2010.15
[4,5,6] are good references. For future Internet, there each Hemisphere. In addition, there are two spot
are [7-15]. beams transmitted at 14/11 Ghz. The satellite uses a
There has been an explosive increase in the 6x6 crossbar-switching matrix for interconnecting the
number of Internet users (1,000 in 1984, 1,000,000 in antenna beams. There are 12 transponders in each of
1992, 1,000,000,000 in 2008). The original IPv4 of the the satellites. The usable bandwidth of each
32 bits protocol has been extended into 128 bits IPv6 transponder is 72 MHz except 150 MHZ for the two
for the purpose of such user explosion. Most IPv4 spot beam transponders and two lower frequency ones.
features remained in IPv6. Through programming The satellites carry the 120 Mb/s digital TDMA. At 14
interface, the new IPv6 addresses have impact on other Eb /No dB the measured performance was 10-7 at the
protocols and applications. One of the most significant total flux density 14 dB below saturation of the power
changes in IPv6 is the elimination of Checksum, which devices [17]. With the demand of VSATs (very small
has been the backbone of error detection scheme in aperture terminals), INTELSAT in mid-1980s
IPv4 and earlier versions. If the proposed Checksum introduced the digital INTELNET with multiple nodes
replacement method [16] can be successful, the [18]. It had many business users, but was not packet
elimination of the IP checksum as suggested in IPv6 switched.
may prove to be unnecessary. Today, INTELSAT has two services with respect
to Internet: The IP Trunking Service and the VoIP
II. INTERNET SATELLITES Service. The first is an end-to-end link for Internet
providers with direct access. VoIP is strung for voice
By the time the satellite camp realized the need for transmission. In both cases, the independent IP
carrying Internet traffic and the Internet camp realized structure disappears. In both cases, the true identity of
the need of wireless transmissions, including the Internet packet switching is lost. Many satellite
satellites, it was too late. But, profit motivation and organizations, including INTELSAT, transmit Internet
engineering talent has not prevented the challenges of traffic through TDMA systems.
Internet satellite communications advancement. The
following are three examples carrying Internet traffic.
B. TELEDESIC
A. INTELSAT
The most ambitious satellite communication system
INTELSAT is the World first and largest satellite ever planned was the TELEDESIC system of 840
network, in terms of the number of countries, territories satellites, consisting of 21 orbit planes and 40 satellites
(145), the number of satellites (50) and the number of per each orbital plane. It planned inter-satellite links,
earth stations (thousands). The number of satellites has gateway satellite links, mobile satellite links, and
gone through more than 24 series from INTELSAT I terminal satellite links. Estimated cost was US $9
(The Early Bird in 1965) to INTELSAT XXIV, which Billion (1995 money). The system would have cells of
was obtained from the AMOS-1 of 7 Ku-Band 53.3 x 53.3 Km and super cells of 160 x 160 Km. Cells
transponders from Israel would be scanned in clockwise circle. Each super cell
(http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/amos-1.htm, 2010). consisted of 9 cells. Transmission information would
INTELSAT APR-1 is actually a Chinese satellite be multiplexed FDM uplink and TDM down at 400
SINOSAT-1.Both INTELSAT XX and XXII are to be MHZ. TELEDESIC is LEO and would be orbit at 250
launched in 2012. Km above the earth surface. It was announced as
The biggest satellites in the INTELSAT series in “Internet in the sky”. The network was intended for
terms of size, weight, number of transponders have the “using low-earth-orbit satellites to provide broadband,
following characteristics: onboard functions including wireless, real-time Internet access Worldwide” [19,
Satellite Switched TDMA (time division multiple 20]. The initial plan included 12 orbit plans with 24
access), multiple beams and other transmission satellites in each plan.
capabilities. Other satellite followed have been copied, Even with scaled back in terms of the number of
modified, reduced or scaled down versions, perhaps satellites and merged with ICO Global
saving cost not only for the spacecrafts, but also for Communications, Teledesic suspended its satellite
launch vehicles. work in 2002, gave up the valuable frequency slots in
The satellites have both 6 GHz and 14 GHz 2003, and practically went out of business after that.
frequency bands. At 6 GHz there are two Global This does not mean that its technical innovations are
coverages, two hemispheric (East and West) coverages. bad; it just costs too much.
Within each Hemi, there is Zone beams depend on the
Global location. For example, in the Atlantic Ocean
Region (AOR), there are four Zone beams and two in

32
C. SPACEWAY controls message traffic flow. Sixteen CFs constitute a
super frame (SF), during which the coordination of
Spaceway, owned and operated by Hughes traffic plan change and the calculation of satellite
Communications, filed with FCC on July 26, 1995. The coordinate for station acquisition can be performed.
original Spaceway satellite architecture was 13 Each framing structure is periodically sampled and
satellites with both Ka- and Ku - band operations and multiplexed for transmission and de-multiplexing in
Global coverage. Depending on the locations of the receiving. It is layered. Each basic frame consists of
orbit, the number of satellites is allocated differently. 4 the signal start of the time frame (SOTF), unique words
satellites each at North America (101o W), Central and (UW) for frame synchronization, reference bust (RB),
South America (50o W), Europe and Africa (25 o E), and traffic burst (TB), where Internet traffic to be
Pacific Rim (110 o E), and a single satellite at 175 o E inserted. The RB needs 480 bits for the entire book
[21]. keeping functions, including 48 bit for each UW. The
The user data rate was designed at 16 kb/s to 1.55 TB needs 464 bits. The total amounts to 944 bits
Mb/s for the uplink with QPSK and 92 Mb/s for the overhead in the basic frame. The 2.0 ms basic frame
downlink with time division multiplexed QPSK. It is a duration for transmission speed at 120.Mb/s, each basic
multiple beam GEO satellite system. The latest is the frame has 120x106 x 2x10-3 = 240,000 bits. Subtracting
SPACEWAT 3, which announced to have onboard 1,000 overhead bits (actually 944) from 240,000,
packet switching, a phase array antenna, and dynamic 239,000 bits are allocated for each basic frame to
beam forming mechanism. Spaceway 3 appears to be traffic data, including Internet message.
only operated in the North America. The satellites are
a part of the HughesNet for Internet transmission. A B. The Foundation of Internet Transmission
diagram of HugesNet Internet satellite access can be
found in (http://consumer.hughesnet.com 2010). Unlike satellite communications, the Internet uses
In a recent development, Hughes announced in routers/bridges to interconnect different computers and
2008 the HN9000 satellite modem, which employs networks. The heart of a router/bridge contains the
adjustable error correcting capabilities to compensating Internet Protocol (IP). Like digital satellite
for signal degradation due to rain or localities. The communications, Internet uses layered protocols for
HN9000 has a low-density parity check (LDPC) code transmission. But the contents of the Internet layers
with QPSK and 8PSK modulations. The uplink access are completely different from that of satellite
rate is “up to 5 Mb/s per site, single – hop, mesh IP communications. In the Internet, link layer handles the
networking between sites.” interface media, where wireless connections takes
place. Network layer is responsible for the movement
III. TRANSMISSION METHODS of the packets by means of IP and other protocols.
Transport layer provides packets flow among the hosts
The difference in network philosophy can be revealed using Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Use
through the following detailed examples. Comparisons Datagram Protocol (UDP). The application layer
can be made on the basic transmission techniques handles users’ information, where the network layer
between the Internet and satellites. Both use provides hop-by-hop service, the transport layers
multiplexing and de-multiplexing for resources provide an end-to-end service. There are 15
sharing. Both the Internet and satellite transmission protocols in the Internet.
communications rely on layer-structured protocols for It is well known [22-25] that the basic IP Header
transmission of information. Beyond that, there are content is 32x20=640 bytes or 5120 bits. The user data
significant differences. is limited to 4,608 bits. The UDP Header is only 256
bits and its data portion is limited to 4,096 bits per each
A. The Foundation of Digital Satellite Transmission Header packet. TCP specifies the maximum segment
size (MSS) up to 11,680 bits for Ethernet and 11,616
As an example, the World’s most sophisticated and bits for IEEE 802.3 encapsulation. Even with sliding
expensive digital satellite communication system is the window protocol, limited TCP bulk data transfer
INTELSAT TDMA system, which uses the frame- depends on many factors, such as the state of network
structured hierarchy [31]. The basic periodic frame F congestion and implementation features. With simple
is a 2.0 ms duration including synchronization mail transfer protocol (SMTP), the Internet is known to
sequence and data. 16 basic consecutive frames carry average e-mail messages around 16,000 bits.
constitute a multiframe (MF), during which each earth Except in the “jumbogram” of IPv6 case, where the
station in the satellite network will be addressed. F network needs to be informed and treated differently,
contains multiplexed traffic information. 32 MFs the payload packet length of Ipv6 is limited to 64,000
constitute a control frame (CF), which coordinates and bytes.

33
 investigations and efforts toward solving some of the
C. The Key Difference between Internet and Satellite Internet by satellite problems may be one more reason
Transmission Packet Length worthwhile to pursuit.

By comparison in terms of the numbers of message There are other satellites carrying Internet traffic, for
bits, 239,000 for basic satellite frame and less than example, Wildblue uses two Ka – band satellites with 4
16,000 for the Internet, the Internet message length is gateways located in the U.S. and Canada. The keys to
much shorter than the frame length of satellite enhance the future Internet satellite communications
communications. This is where the problem lies: the may rest on the implementation of variable statistical
original idea of Internet was, and still is, for small message length detection and transmission; and the
packets to be efficiently switched among multiple establishment of a joint Internet satellite International
nodes with different paths for transmission. This standard committee in the future to address the
fundamental Internet feature cannot be realized in any challenges we face today.
of the present satellite network. But, the problem does
not stop here. V. REFERENCES
Unless the Internet is used as long file transfer, not
as short packet transmission, to fill the basic satellite [1] Wu, W. W., “Future Satellite & Space
time slot, it is inefficient for satellites carrying Internet Communications,”Invited Keynote Speech,
messages. But, it has been done just that – stringing Proceedings of the IEEE International Workshop on
Internet protocol packets into satellite frames and Satellite and Space Communications, Universidad
accumulation of packets for transmission. The result is Carlos III de Madrid, Leganes, Spain, September 2006.
that all the flexible Internet protocols are bounded and
become inflexible. It is against Internet philosophy and [2] Wu, W. W., “Satellite Communications,”
it is a waste. Unless the satellite frame or Internet Proceeding of the IEEE, Vol. 85, No. 6, 1997.
protocol structure changes, transmission inefficiency
will remain. [3] Pritchard, W. L., Suyderhoud, H. G., Nelson, R. A.,
If a satellite transmission mechanism try to adopt Satellite Communication Systems Engineering,
the Internet protocol structure, then the satellite link Prentice Hall, 1993.
becomes inefficient. Because in any TDMA type
digital satellite communications, the system is efficient [4] Comer, D. E., The INTERNET Book, Prentice Hall,
only if all the message parts of the frames are filled. In 2000.
the future, satellite dynamic framing and statistical
sampling may be feasible either onboard satellites or [5] Cerf, V. G., “A Brief History of the Internet and
on the ground to provide truly “Internet in the sky”. Related Works,” Internet Society (ISOC) 1992.

IV. CONCLUDING REMARKS [6] Internet Architecture Board (IAB), Internet

Engineering Force (IETF), Internet Engineering
Many have addressed Internet satellite issues. But the Steering Group (IESG), Internet Research Task Group
basic problem of incompatibility has not been clearly (IRTG) and the Publication of Internet Standards -
addressed. The ideas of packet switching in satellite Requests for Comments (RFCs).
communications are not new [26-30]. But most of
solutions were addressing not the same notion as [7] IETF Journal #74 June 2009. A. Peltomäki,
Internet type of packet switching and not the same Stimulating an Innovation Ecosystem for Future
order of packet lengths. Many have addressed the Internet Technologies, EC Information Society and
Internet quality of service, e.g., [26-30]. But there are Media Directorate-General, Lulea, Sweden, June 2009
more drastic problems than merely the quality of
services. There are millions of miles of terrestrial and [8] Huitema, C., IPv6: The New Internet Protocol,
undersea cables connected via the Internet worldwide. Prentice Hall PTR, 1996.
They have been known to have complete interruptions
due to fishing nets, shark bites, and underwater [9] Thomas, S. A., IPNG and the TCP/IP Protocols –
earthquakes; like the one in December 2008, 75 percent Implementing the Next Generation Internet. Wiley
of the Internet traffic between Europe and the Middle Computer Publishing, 1996
East was completely down for days. During this time
satellites were used to restore the Internet traffic [10] Report from the National ICT Research D
regardless how incompatible the networks. To avoid irectors Working Group on Future Internet (FI) of the
such large-scale Internet breakdowns in the future, EC on Information Society and Media- Nov. 2008.

34
[11] Schönwälder J. et al. , Future Internet = Content +
Services + Management, IEEE Communications [21] Deskin Research Group Technical Report No”:
Magazine, July 2009 900930, “Characterization of Emerging Commercial
SATCOM Systems.”
[12] FUTURE INTERNET ASSEMBLY, Madrid,
Spain, 9th – 10th December 2008, Meeting Report, [22] Stevens, W. R., TCP/IP Ilustrated Volume I – The
December 2008 Protocols, Addison-Wesley, 1999.

[13] DG Information Society and Media Directorate, [23] IETF Journals from Vol. 1, Issue 1 (2005) to Vol.
for Converged Networks and Service Future Internet 5 Issue 1 (June 2009)
2020, Visions of an Industry Expert Group, May 2009
[24] Comer, D. Internetworking with TCP/IP :
[14] Tselentis, G. et al. (Eds.), Towards the Future Principles, Protocols, and Architectures, Prentice Hall,
Internet, IOS Press, 2009 2000.

[15] Special Issue on IPv6: The Basis for the Next [25] Hall, E. “The Next Century TCP/IP,” Network
Generation Internet, IEEE Communications Magazine, Magazine, September 2004.
January 2004.
[26] Special Issue on Internet Quality of Services:
[16] Wu, W. W., Wu, M. U., and Wu, B. U., Challenges and Technologies, IEEE Communications
“QoE/QoS Improvement in Wireless Internet,” Magazine, June 2005.
Proceedings of the INTERNET 2009 - The First
International Conference on Evolving Internet, August [27] Evans, J. and Filsfils, C. “Deploying IP and
23-29, 2009, Cannes/La Bocca, France. MPLS QoS for Multiservice Networks: Theory and
Practice,” The Morgan Kauffman Series 2007.
[17] Wu, W. W., “Blockage Mitigation Techniques in
Satellite Communications,” IEEE Wireless Special [28] Jha, S. and Hassan, M. Engineering Internet QoS,
Issue on Present and Future Satellite Communications Artect House Pub. 2002.
October 2005.
[29] Zhao, W., Olshefski, D., and Schulzrinne, H.
[18] Perillan, L. B. and Wu, W. W., “Digital Satellite “Internet Quality of Service: An Overview,” Columbia
Services and Network Architecture: INTELSAT University Research Report 2000.
SERVICES and THEIR EVOLUTION,” Proceedings of
the IEEE International Communications Conference, [30] Xiao, X. and Ni, L. “Internet QoS: A Big
Vol. 1, 1987. Picture,” IEEE Network, 03/04 1999.

[19] Sturza, M. A., “Architecture of the TELEDESIC [31] Wu, W. W., “The INTELSAT TDMA Network
Satellite System,” and “The TELEDESIC Satellite and Protocols”, Chapter 7, Elements of Digital Satellite
System,” from the website Communications, Computer Science Press, 1985.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledesic.

[20] Kohn, D., “The Teledesic Network: Using Low-

Earth-Orbit Satellites to Provide Broadband, Wireless,
Real-Time Internet Access Worldwide”
www.isoc.org/inet96/ proceedings/g1/g1_3.htm

35