Experimental evaluation of delay tolerant networking (DTN) protocols for cislunar communications with link disruption

NASA has interests in operating cislunar communications using internet-type protocols such as Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). TCP experiences severe performance degradation in cislunar communications because of some assumptions built into its design. Delay/disruption tolerant networking (DTN) is a class of network techniques that developed to work over internet protocols to accommodate long link delay and frequent link disruptions in space communication environment. Most of the work concerning DTN protocols and techniques focused on its application in terrestrial wireless network and sensor-based networks. In this thesis, we present an experimental evaluation of the DTN protocols with BP/TCPCL running on top of TCP/IP over a long-delayed cislunar communication link with focuses on the case with link disruptions. We hope the experiment result and analysis in this thesis will work equally well in any deep space mission with a round-trip time (RTT) that is comparable to that of the Earth-Moon system.