Hybrid Granular Controller Provisioning in Software Defined Satellite Internet

Software-defined networking (SDN) has been applied to satellite Internet for flexible network control. However, the dynamic topology and traffic variations inherent in satellite networks significantly increase the complexity of controller provisioning. To address this challenge, this letter proposes a hybrid granular controller provisioning (HGCP) method, comprising two components: switch-level provisioning employs a p-median model to jointly optimize controller placement and request assignment, adapting to dynamic topology changes; request-level provisioning uses particle swarm optimization algorithm to perform request reassignment at heavy-load switches, ensuring load balancing across the controllers. Simulation results demonstrate that HGCP outperforms existing methods in flow-setup delay and load balancing while requiring fewer switch migrations.