Interplanetary Network Designer and Visualizer: Presentation and Live Demo
Résumé
The Solar System Internet (SSI) is crucial for enabling communication between spacecraft and satellites within our solar system, a necessity in the face of increasing interplanetary missions. Initially, the Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) architecture and Bundle Protocol (BP) were developed as solutions to enable data transport over the challenging space environment. However, adapting the IP stack is a recent trend posing questions about the utility of DTN efforts, with lively discussions and standardization still in progress at IETF and CCSDS. In this context, a critical need emerges for a tool capable of generating realistic, large-scale network topologies and providing insights into the dynamics of SSI topologies. More realism in existing network scenarios is needed primarily due to contact topologies manually configured with static contacts. This method overlooks the natural time-evolving latency shifts and the occlusion dynamics experienced by landers and orbiters on remote planets, rendering the resulting topologies inadequately reflective of the true complexities of interplanetary communication networks. We introduce the “Interplanetary Network Designer and Visualizer” (IPN-DV), developed on the Unity 3D software engine. IPN-DV uses advanced physics and ray-tracing models to accurately represent orbital dynamics and line-of-sight computations between interplanetary assets. It offers an immersive 3D environment, making it ideal for educational use, and helps users understand the complex dynamics of SSI topologies. More importantly, IPN-DV’s primary function is to create usable contact plans from the simulated topology, compatible with NASA's Interplanetary Overlay Network (ION) stack and advanced simulators like DtnSim, facilitating further developments in interplanetary networking.