Joint Optimization of VNF Reusing and Routing in Satellite Networks

Low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks has attracted a lot of attention, since it is able to provide high-quality services worldwide. With the assistance of NFV technology, the flexibility and the quality of service (QoS) of LEO satellite networks can be further improved. However, most existing researches have not considered virtual network functions (VNFs) reusing during the process of service function chain (SFC) placement in NFV-enabled satellite networks. In this paper, we investigate the problem of SFC placement, and propose a joint VNF reusing and routing algorithm. By considering both of the initialization delay and sharing of VNFs, the service deployment delay can be effectively reduced, and the network profit can be largely improved. In our setting, simulation results show that our proposed algorithm outperforms baseline algorithms in profit, with an improvement of at least 23 %.