The TOFFEE Project
HOMEDOCUMENTATIONUPDATESVIDEOSRESEARCHDOWNLOADSPONSORSCONTACT


RESEARCH 》 A study on Deep Space Networks (DSN)

When you are dealing Deep Space Networks (DSN) one among the most challenging parts is the Interplanetary distances and communicating data across such vast distances. This is where we are not dealing with common Internet type traffic such as HTTP/FTP/VoIP/etc but it is completely different when it comes to DSN so far. So optimizing data in DSN becomes mandatory. For example if you think one of the Mars Rovers, they have used LZO lossless compression. Although they do to an extent lossy compression on images shot by these space-probes at times they we may also need high-resolution detailed high-quality images. And sometimes it is not just photos sent back to the earth, at times the space probes may also report their health status, keep alive messages as well transmit the scientific research data such as data recorded in various sensors situated on-board.

Although we got space probes across the space and ISS (International Space Station) orbiting over Earth, we do not have a scenario yet something like human colonies/bases on Moon or Mars and other planets. Eventually when such things happen in around 2020-2030 or so as the way NASA and scientists predict, DSN is going to be a case where more private companies may offer their solutions. But before that we need to still solve some of the fundamental data communication challenges involved in DSN. This is on of the fields which I am actively involved since a decade.

Unlike here on Earth upgrading a piece of hardware or communication technology is just impossible to do on a space probe which may exist millions of miles away from Earth. This also makes this technology evolve quite slowly unlike Earth bound communication technologies such as Mobile communications, Satellite networks and so on. For further complete coverage of this topic kindly refer my below detailed video titled Deep Space Communication - Episode1.

Understanding Communication Speeds: Most DSN networks are radio-wave signal based and not light (photonic) based communication. Radio waves do not travel at the speed of light. It is also one of the reason for the slow-down of the DSN unlike ground or earth bound fibre optic links since in this case data travels almost (since the medium is not vacuum and speed of light depends on the medium) at the speed of light. Before we imagine network speeds in DSN, let us understand an ideal situation of speed of light between two points in space:

Distance Speed of Light
Earth <> Moon1.5 seconds
Earth <> Mars4 minutes (240 seconds)
Earth <> Sun8 minutes (480 seconds)
Earth <> Jupiter30 minutes (1800 seconds)
Earth <> Saturn1 hour (3600 seconds)
Earth <> Neptune4 hours (14400 seconds)
Earth <> Pluto4.6 hours (16560 seconds)

NOTE: Since we compute network speeds often in bits/sec (and latency in nano-seconds and milli-seconds), in the above chart I am converting everything in seconds to understand the scale.

So based on the above chart now we can understand the scale of complexity in DSN. This underscores a fundamental limitation of physics !

Communication Protocols for DSN: For DSN a complete new set of protocols are defined which is SCP (stands for Space Communications Protocol). There are various RFCs which are defined which is called as SCPS (where S stands for Specifications). There are various variants under SCPS are defined such as SCPS-FP, SCPS-TP, SCPS-SP and SCPS-NP. The biggest difference you may find in DSN is that the delay involved due to inter-planetary distances. So based on the distance you may experience communication delays, loss of packets, etc. Say for example if you think a successful connection is established (for example a TCP session/connection), you may have to-and-fro keep alive acknowledgement packets exchanged every few milliseconds. But whereas in a case of DSN you may experience this happening every few minutes or every few hours. So that is how bizarre it is. Although there is no packet exchanges happening in few minutes or hours you should understand this is due to vast distances involved.

These SCPS specifications are defined by a committee called as CCSDS (stands for Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems). This is a body which is formed as per collaborative effort of various space agencies across the world. An Internet spanning across multiple planets is termed as IPN (stands for Interplanetary Network or in short InterPlanet). For further complete coverage of this topic kindly refer my below detailed video titled Deep Space Communication - Episode2.

Lossless Compression Algorithms for DSN: A specific set of tailor made algorithms are required for space communications unlike the ones which are used in communications here on Earth. They have to be light-weight and at the same time super-efficient and should have least processing latencies. The communication data could be just anything such as scientific research data collected via space probe sensors or it could be hi-resolution photos sent back to earth or it could be commands sent to these probes via ground control crew. I have done extensive research on this for almost more than a decade on various lossless compression algorithms. This is a case where we are dealing optimizing real-time data. This is not a passive file compression something like creating a tar-ball or some zipfile. This is a case you are sending and receiving packets continuously and you are processing them in real-time.

NASA have their own lossless compression variants and often they are customized. One of the well known algorithms which NASA uses is the LOCO-I (stands for Low Complexity Lossless Compression) which is mainly meant for compressing images. LOCO-I is a kind of lossless compression variant of JPEG. Which is why it is also can be sometimes called as JPEG-LS (stands for JPEG-Lossless). Based on LOCO-I NASA did hardware based solution which is FPGA-LOCO. Since it is hardware based, it is good in performance, reliability and extremely energy efficient.

Apart from this CCSDS have their own variant of RICE lossless compression algorithm. For further complete coverage of this topic kindly refer my below detailed video titled Space Lossless Compression.

References:

NASA:

Wikipedia:

Other:



Suggested Topics:


WAN Optimization and Network Optimization

💎 TOFFEE-MOCHA new bootable ISO: Download
💎 TOFFEE Data-Center Big picture and Overview: Download PDF


Recommended Topics:

TOFFEE-DataCenter - First Live Demo and software development - Update: 26-Aug-2016 ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021
Today I have done a test setup so that I can able to connect my Android Samsung Tab via TOFFEE DataCenter. Below is my complete test topology of my setup. For demo (and research/development) context I configured TOFFEE DataCenter in engineering debug mode. So I do not need two devices for this purpose.

TOFFEE-DataCenter Live Demo with Clash of Clans game data - 30-Aug-2016 ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021
Today I have done a test setup so that I can able to connect my Android Samsung Tab via TOFFEE DataCenter. Below is my complete test topology of my setup. For demo (and research/development) context I configured TOFFEE DataCenter in engineering debug mode. So that I do not need two devices for this purpose.

TOFFEE-Butterscotch Bandwidth saver software development - Update: 28-Oct-2016 ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021
Here is my first software development update of TOFFEE-Butterscotch. In my first TOFFEE-Butterscotch news update I have introduced about TOFFEE-Butterscotch research, project specifications, use-cases, etc. Introducing TOFFEE-Butterscotch Alerts: These are simple packet counters which corresponds to the filter type. For example if the incoming TCP-SYN packets are blocked then its corresponding alert counter will increment whenever such a packet arrives and gets filtered (dropped).

TOFFEE Download :: TOFFEE-1.1.70-1-portable ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021

Internet optimization through TOFFEE-DataCenter WAN Optimization Demo ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021

CDN Introduction - Content Delivery Networks or Content Distribution Networks ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021



TOFFEE Data-Center WAN Optimization deployment in Big Data Analytics ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021

Live demo - Data Transfer - High bandwidth to Low bandwidth ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021
I always wanted to do some real experiments and research on packet flow patterns from High-bandwidth to Low-bandwidth networks via networking devices. This is something can be analyzed via capturing Network stack buffer data and other parameters, bench-marking, and so on. But eventually the data-transfer nature and other aspects is often contaminated due to the underlying OS and the way Network stack is implemented. So to understand the nature of packet flow from Higher to Lower bandwidth and vice-versa such as Lower to higher bandwidth, I thought I experiment with various tools and things which physically we can observe this phenomena.

TOFFEE-DataCenter :: Features Supported ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021
Here is a list of TOFFEE-DataCenter features supported. TOFFEE-DataCenter currently supports some of the important features such as loss-less network data compression, Packet Deduplication (protocols/applications supported), Application Acceleration, TCP Acceleration, dynamic MTU optimization, data packaging, hardware offload support, etc.

TOFFEE-DataCenter Download :: TOFFEE-DATACENTER-1.2.2-1-portable ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021



Featured Educational Video:
Watch on Youtube - [89//1] B.E and M.E Final Year Projects - Form your Team ↗

Recording Lab Monthly off-grid power-consumption readings for research ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021

TOFFEE-DataCenter WAN Optimization :: TOFFEE-DATACENTER-1.3.25-1-portable ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021
Download TOFFEE-DATACENTER-1.3.25-1-portable.tar.xz via Google Drive share: platform independent (portable) source: TOFFEE-DATACENTER-1.2.2-1-portable.tar.xz * Alternatively download from SOURCEFORGE project site. * Here are the TOFFEE-DataCenter supported features. * To know more about the project kindly refer TOFFEE-Datacenter Documentation, News and Updates

TOFFEE-Mocha WAN Emulation software development - Update: 19-July-2016 ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021
Today I refined the first page consolidated report graphs. TOFFEE-Mocha (unlike TOFFEE) is a WAN Emulator, so the graphs are supposed to highlight this purpose and should display the overall network activity. Unlike TOFFEE, the TOFFEE-Mocha report should contain in general what is received versus what is sent across the wire. In case if the packet drop feature is enabled, you should see few missing bytes and packets. Similarly in future I may support packet duplication feature, in that case you may see more packets/bytes sent versus the packets/bytes actually received.

Setting up a WAN Emulator within VirtualBox ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021



Watch on Youtube - [889//1] 280 WAN Optimization - Animated demo of Packet Optimization in TOFFEE-DataCenter ↗

Tweaking Network Latency - Live Demo - via TOFFEE-DataCenter ↗
Saturday' 13-Mar-2021



Research :: Optimization of network data (WAN Optimization) at various levels:
Network File level network data WAN Optimization


Learn Linux Systems Software and Kernel Programming:
Linux, Kernel, Networking and Systems-Software online classes


Hardware Compression and Decompression Accelerator Cards:
TOFFEE Architecture with Compression and Decompression Accelerator Card [CDN]


TOFFEE-DataCenter on a Dell Server - Intel Xeon E5645 CPU:
TOFFEE-DataCenter screenshots on a Dual CPU - Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5645 @ 2.40GHz - Dell Server