CONTEXT AWARE ADAPTIVE SWITCHING IN RECONFIGURABLE LOW EARTH ORBIT SATELLITE NETWORKS

A payload switching architecture for LEO satellite networks minimizes processing and storage requirements of payloads for deployment as small primary or secondary payloads, payloads perform only forwarding functions. Forwarding rules are provisioned in the payloads enabling them to reroute in case of failures or congestion without intervention from a ground station. Configuration rules are provisioned in the payloads enabling them to dynamically establish and remove interplane crosslinks without intervention from a ground station. The central network operations center on the ground computes forwarding rules and configuration rules for payloads and uploads the rules to the payloads.