Goal-Oriented Networking for Space

Introduction

The accelerated pace of space exploration, interplanetary and non-terrestrial connectivity calls for scalable and efficient communication network architectures that can achieve end-to-end effectiveness for increasing numbers of bursty flows, occurring in applications such as remote inference, monitoring, and automation.

Challenges

This is made challenging by the variable delays and disruptions that sometimes preclude real-time communication and end-to-end acknowledgements.

Proposed Solutions

We propose to tackle this fundamental challenge by leveraging insight and methods from the recent progress in the area of goal or task-oriented communication, by setting three fundamental goals:

1. Principles and Decision Metrics: For goal-oriented sampling and multi-user scheduling, that can handle highly variable delay processes that contain memory.
2. Random Access Policies: For massive machine-type communications that replace exogenous arrivals with goal-oriented traffic shaping.
3. Flow Control Mechanisms: That exploit the cross-layer operability at application and link layers of Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocols.

Expected Outcomes

Through achieving these objectives, we will enable effective data flow on space networks using a fraction of the resources with respect to the state-of-the-art. This will provide the required scalability for the growth of interplanetary and non-terrestrial networks (NTN).

Collaborations

To ensure the timely transfer of results to the space community, as well as the beneficial impact on the upcoming 6G standard, GO SPACE includes collaborations with specialists in Aerospace and Satellite Networks, and experimentation on real-world satellites and DTN protocols.