Scalable lunar surface networks and adaptive orbit access

Prior to launching a manned mission to the Moon, it is critical to establish a lunar outpost with different activities such as habitats, observations, and rovers. Networking such activities through wireless technologies is much more effective than point-to-point configurations. An innovative overlaying network is presented in this paper to support both lunar surface networking and orbit access. It is then focused on protocol design for lunar surface networks, especially a new medium access control (MAC) protocol for lunar surface networks. The new MAC protocol supports heterogeneous QoS of different traffic types while maintaining the scalability of throughput. Tradeoff between power efficiency and link robustness is also conducted as a sub-function of the MAC protocol. Reconfigurable radio architecture is employed to perform cross-layer optimization between MAC and physical layers. Initial results based on simulations have shown that the proposed protocols can meet the requirements of scalable lunar surface networking.