Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites provide short round-trip delays and are becoming in- creasingly important. One of the challenges in LEO satellite networks is the development of specialized and efficient routing algorithms. To satisfy the QoS requirements of multimedia applications, satellite routing protocols should consider handovers and minimize their effect on the active connections. A distributed QoS routing scheme based on heuristic ant algorithm is proposed for satisfying delay bound and avoiding link congestion. Simulation results show that the call blocking probabilities of this al- gorithm are less than that of Shortest Path First (SPF) with different delay bound.
A medium earth orbit (MEO) tracking and data relay satellite system (TDRSS) constellation scheme for China is proposed. This system consists of MEO satellite constellation, inter-satellite links (ISLs) and terrestrial gateway station, which can provide continuous bidirectional data transmission links between low altitude spacecrafls and the terrestrial gateway station in China. Theoretical analysis and simulation results indicate that the proposed constellation can cover the global low altitude space sphere and earth surface of China continuously, and has a preferable practical perspective.