Link Handover-Aware Multicast Algorithms for LEO Satellite Networks

Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks have emerged as an efficient solution to offer communications services worldwide, especially to remote areas uncovered by current terrestrial networks. A network with sufficient satellites deployed can connect any two points on the ground. However, routing for multicast requests is more challenging due to the inherent mobility of LEO satellites. This paper aims to design the shortest routes for multicast requests while reducing the number of link handovers. The formulated problem appears to be an NP-hard problem. We first propose a low-complexity heuristic algorithm, the Minimum Handover Tree (MHT) algorithm, to find a suboptimal solution efficiently. We then further design a Multicast Tree Size Aware Handover (MTSAH) algorithm to improve the MHT algorithm in the tree size. The simulation results demonstrate that our proposed solutions outperform several baselines in the existing work.