The effect of “window size” on throughput performance of DTN in lossy cislunar communications

Delay/disruption tolerant networking (DTN) offers a new solution to highly stressed communications in space environments. It is considered one of the most suitable technologies to be employed in space internetworking. To date, little work has been done in investigating how to achieve the best performance of DTN transmission over lossy, long-delay space channels. In this paper, we present an experimental investigation of how the throughput performance of Licklider transmission protocol (LTP)-based DTN is affected by the LTP flow control “window” size, established by the Number of Sessions (NOS) and Number of Bytes per Session (NBS) characterizing the LTP channel. The intent of the work is, in particular, to find a relationship between the window size and throughput performance of DTN in a typical lossy and long delay cislunar communications infrastructure. One major conclusion is that a bigger NOS generally results in higher throughput than a low NOS, and NBS does not affect the throughput significantly.