Traffic Modeling for NASA´s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Network

IP-based communications technologies are being implemented for space applications, including NASA´s constellation program and its efforts toward returning humans to the Moon. In order to be able to accurately estimate performance, models have been developed that characterize the types of offered traffic that will occur. Voice and real-time motion imagery (video) models have been specifically developed due to their importance, in addition to general models for telemetry and command data flow. Synthesized traffic may be generated from these models and aggregated to build representative loads on the communications transport resources for performance characterization.