A Simplified Algorithm for Online Satellite Network Slice Planning with Trade-Off Between Load-Balancing and Minimum-Hop Routing

In this paper, we explore the tradeoff between load-balancing and minimum-hop routing within software-defined networks (SDNs) deployed on satellite mega-constellations. To address the real-time network management challenges posed by sequential virtual network requests (VNRs) in practical scenarios, our system model is based on online satellite network slice planning (oSNSP). Given the NP-hard nature of single-path finding for load-balancing, we propose a novel approach utilizing a modified Dijkstra algorithm that jointly optimizes for both latency and load-balancing with computational efficiency. This approach is defined through two parameterized sub-problems that concurrently accounts for load and hop count. Finally, our numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method effectively balances the tradeoff between load-balancing and hop count in the context of oSNSP.