Comparative Analysis of Interplanetary and Pervasive Communications

The paper proposes a comparison of two communication paradigms, interplanetary and pervasive, through the analysis of problems, solutions and future challenges. The aim is to show that interplanetary communication is performed through peculiar networks, which, on one hand, use most of the pervasive communication paradigm but, on the other hand, own features that allow the extension of the pervasive network concept. The paper contains an introduction of pervasive networking and of interplanetary communication and presents the future challenges of both focusing on architectures and protocols, taking the new solutions of delay tolerant networking (DTN) as a reference point. The use of new interworking devices, called Extended Gateways, aimed at getting efficient interworking over interplanetary networks by joining the features of QoS and DTN Gateways, is envisaged.