Satellite IoT networks balance data freshness and delivery deadlines
Joint Freshness and Deadline Feasibility in Store-and-Forward Satellite IoT Networks
Networking and Internet Architecture
Summary
When satellites collect data for the internet of things (IoT), they store messages onboard and send them later during specific connection times. The authors studied how to decide which messages to send first to keep the data fresh and meet deadlines, especially when storage and contact opportunities are limited. They created mathematical models that predict if timely delivery and freshness are possible under different conditions. Their results help understand trade-offs between data load, storage capacity, timing, and how fresh the information stays.
What this means in practice
- •For network schedulers: Schedule satellite IoT message transmissions to meet freshness and deadline requirements despite limited contact times and storage.
- •For satellite system designers: Design satellite communication protocols that optimize backlog management and delivery order to improve IoT data timeliness under geometric constraints.
Authors
Suleyman Çıtır
Abstract
3GPP Release 19 supports store-and-forward satel- lite access, where traffic accumulated during feeder-link outages must be forwarded through finite, geometry-limited windows. Static priority levels offer little discrimination among large backlogs and ignore the decay in packet value. We formulate QoS feasibility for status updates, measured by destination freshness, and deadline-constrained event reports over periodic two-hop contacts with finite onboard storage. For general calendars, we derive ordering-sensitive miss, cohort-capacity, delivery-rate, and freshness bounds, including an exact status-only characterization. For single status flow and single event class sharing a contact pair per period, a finite-state program gives exact joint feasibility for arbitrary integer age thresholds. Numerical results quantify tradeoffs among load, capacity, deadline, and freshness tolerance.