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SDN-Orchestrated Dual-Path 5G/SATCOM Maritime Communications for Carrier Strike Groups

Avinash Srinivasan, Dalibor Španjević, Kevin H. Nguyen, Bannon Ireton, Christopher B. Landis

arXiv:2609.05729v1cs.NI

TL;DR

CSG networks must prioritize mission traffic and maintain communications despite heterogeneous links affected by fading, weather, and intermittent outages. A centralized SDN controller routes packets by traffic class and link state across stochastic 5G with AMC and Ku-band SATCOM, using paired trials and comparisons. Across all four regions, SDN remained highest-reliability; overall mean reliability was 93.09% versus 36.22% 5G-only and 89.87% SATCOM-only.

  • Problem

    CSG networks must prioritize mission traffic and maintain communications despite heterogeneous links affected by fading, weather, and intermittent outages.

    Source: §I · p. 1

  • Method

    A centralized SDN controller routes packets by traffic class and link state across stochastic 5G with AMC and Ku-band SATCOM, using paired trials and comparisons.

    Source: §I · p. 2

  • Results

    Across all four regions, SDN remained highest-reliability; overall mean reliability was 93.09% versus 36.22% 5G-only and 89.87% SATCOM-only.

    Source: A. Routing-Mode Comparison · p. 5, 5) Multi-Region Validation · p. 6

  • Takeaways & Limitations

    Dual-path SDN routing yields higher reliability while sustaining the 100 ms tactical deadline that static_satcom cannot meet.

    Source: §V · p. 6

    Per-packet i.i.d. rain sampling preserves regional marginal rates but breaks temporal correlation of sustained storm episodes.

    Source: 3) Weather Sampling · p. 4

Abstract

from arXiv · show

Carrier Strike Group (CSG) communications must sustain mission traffic across heterogeneous links whose quality varies with distance, weather, fading, and intermittent outages. We present an integrated Software-Defined Networking (SDN)/Software-Defined Radio (SDR) framework that unifies 5G and satellite communications (SATCOM) under a single control plane for dual-path failover in CSG communications. The framework is evaluated via stochastic simulation across four operational regions: Norfolk, the Norwegian Sea, the Philippine Sea, and the North Pacific storm track. The framework couples a centralized SDN controller with a Rician-faded 5G channel under Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC), a Ku-band SATCOM channel with ITU-R P.618/P.838 rain attenuation, and Gilbert-Elliott burst-availability processes on both links. The controller routes each packet by traffic class and current link state. Experiments use 60 independent trials of 50,000 packets per parameter setting with common random numbers, paired confidence intervals, and convergence diagnostics across fault, fading, and region sweeps. For the Norfolk weather baseline, SDN routing reaches 93.09% reliability versus 36.22% (5G-only) and 89.87% (SATCOM-only), with paired gains of +56.87 and +3.22 percentage points. The advantage grows under joint low-Rician-K/high-burst-fault stress, and AMC improves 5G robustness as Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio degrades. SDN remains the highest-reliability mode across all four regions, indicating that cross-layer SDN-controlled failover improves maritime resilience without relying on deterministic link abstractions.

I. Introduction

CSG communications must adapt to changing link conditions and prioritize mission traffic across heterogeneous paths. This paper evaluates a stochastic, SDN/SDR-controlled 5G/SATCOM failover framework and its routing modes.

I. Introduction

  • Conventional CSG networks can struggle to prioritize heterogeneous traffic and reroute it when fading, rain, or outages degrade a path.Static routing can waste satellite resources when ships are within LoS or leave mission traffic exposed when a preferred path is unavailable.Source: §I · p. 1
  • A stochastic dual-path CSG simulator captures packet-level fading, weather, and link-availability variability across 5G and SATCOM.The modeled links use Rician fading with AMC, ITU-R P.618 rain attenuation, and Gilbert–Elliott burst-error availability.Source: §I · p. 2
  • The per-packet SDN controller uses traffic class, link state, and PHY feasibility to select between 5G and SATCOM, with three routing modes for comparison.The modes are sdn, static_5g, and static_satcom; tactical traffic on SATCOM includes AES-256-GCM accounting.Source: §I · p. 2
  • The evaluation uses paired-sample inference and convergence diagnostics, and sweeps fault rate, Rician K-factor, traffic mix, and weather distributions.The multi-region assessment covers SDN reliability and failover behavior.Source: §I · p. 2

II. Related Work

Prior maritime SDN/SDR work motivates programmable control and cross-layer routing, but has largely emphasized architecture or evaluated opaque links. This paper implements and quantitatively evaluates unified control under stochastic channel, weather, and burst-availability conditions.

II. Related Work

  • Prior maritime SDN/SDR work established the architectural case for centralized control of heterogeneous shipboard links and for exposing radio channel state to routing.Niknami et al. proposed a unified SDN–SDR maritime framework; this work implements and quantitatively evaluates it under stochastic conditions.Source: §II · p. 2

A. SDN for Multi-SATCOM and Cognitive Maritime Links

  • Multi-SATCOM studies use centralized SDN with Multipath TCP for load balancing, while later work adds UAV relays for handover continuity.Other work applies SDN-based cognitive routing to cognitive-radio maritime links using cluster-head local views.Source: A. SDN for Multi-SATCOM and Cognitive… · p. 2
  • Prior multi-SATCOM and cognitive-link controllers were validated in emulators or custom simulators with opaque links, leaving packet-level PHY impairment interactions outside their scope.Source: A. SDN for Multi-SATCOM and Cognitive… · p. 2

B. Simulation and Fault Modeling

The methodology combines physically grounded stochastic links with centralized SDN routing and paired evaluation. It holds topology and SATCOM geometry fixed across regional weather samples, while varying traffic mix and link conditions.

B. Simulation and Fault Modeling

  • Earlier resilient-network simulations often use deterministic outages or scenario-level weather gates, which can obscure packet-level fading, attenuation, and burst outages.Common random numbers and paired comparisons separate routing-policy effects from random environmental variation, but are rarely combined with physically grounded maritime PHY models.Source: B. Simulation and Fault Modeling · pp. 2–3

III. System Model and Methodology

  • The simulator couples a stochastic dual-path link model and adaptive SDR front end to a centralized SDN controller.It includes Rician-faded 5G with AMC, Ku-band SATCOM with ITU-R P.618 rain attenuation, Gilbert–Elliott link availability, and paired tests with convergence diagnostics.Source: §III · p. 3

A. Topology, Traffic, and Operational Regions

  • The CSG topology has a carrier, five escorts, and a shore facility; SATCOM uses a fixed 45° elevation and fixed slant-range geometry.The SATCOM abstraction captures rain fade, propagation delay, and return-channel overhead.Source: A. Topology, Traffic, and Operational… · p. 3
  • The same topology and SATCOM geometry are evaluated using weather samples from Norfolk, the Norwegian Sea, the Philippine Sea, and the North Pacific storm track.Regional metric differences therefore reflect rain-rate distributions rather than fleet geometry.Source: A. Topology, Traffic, and Operational… · p. 3
  • Tactical packets are nominally 256 B, latency-sensitive, and use a representative 100 ms deadline; administrative packets are 4 kB and tolerate SATCOM transit.The tactical-packet fraction is a sweep parameter, with a default equal mix.Source: A. Topology, Traffic, and Operational… · p. 3

B. Dual-Path PHY Model

The 5G PHY models packet-level SINR under Rician fading and path loss, selects a feasible band, and adapts modulation and coding to channel quality.

B. Dual-Path PHY Model

1) 5G Link with Rician Fading and AMC:

The SATCOM path models Ku-band rain attenuation using ITU-R formulations and samples regional rain per packet as an explicit routing-layer stress test.

2) Ku-band SATCOM with Rain Fade:

  • Specific attenuation γR depends on frequency and rain rate, and slant-path attenuation accumulates it over an effective path length set by elevation and rain-cell height.The attenuation coefficients k(f) and α(f) come from ITU-R P.838; the path model follows ITU-R P.618.Source: 2) Ku-band SATCOM with Rain Fade · p. 3
  • End-to-end SATCOM latency accounts for GEO-relay and shore-node hops, payload transmission rate, and retry penalties.The negotiated data rate is Rb ∈ {2, 4, 8} Mbps.Source: 2) Ku-band SATCOM with Rain Fade · p. 3
  • Per-packet rain draws preserve each region’s observed marginal distribution but break storm-duration correlation, making the routing test an upper bound on fade variability.Coupling rain to Gilbert–Elliott states to represent storm persistence is left for future work.Source: 3) Weather Sampling · p. 4

3) Weather Sampling:

The model represents link outages with two-state Gilbert–Elliott processes and uses a carrier-based SDN controller to route packets by class and link state.

C. Link Availability: Gilbert–Elliott Model

  • Each link switches between good and bad states independently of fading and rain, with high packet-error probability in the bad state and PHY-set error probability in the good state.The chain is parameterized by steady-state bad probability and mean bad-state burst length.Source: C. Link Availability: Gilbert–Elliott… · p. 4

D. SDN Control Plane and Routing

  • The carrier controller tracks node geometry, link states, 5G AMC rates, and SATCOM availability to select a primary path and fail over when it is unavailable.Tactical packets prefer eligible 5G; administrative packets prefer SATCOM unless rain-fade margin is exceeded.Source: D. SDN Control Plane and Routing · p. 4
  • Tactical traffic crossing SATCOM receives AES-256-GCM encryption, and the simulator compares dual-path SDN routing with 5G-only and SATCOM-only modes.The encryption latency contribution is recorded separately.Source: D. SDN Control Plane and Routing · p. 4

E. Performance Metrics

The study measures delivery, tactical deadlines, satellite offload, 5G latency jitter, and mean latency, using paired trials and convergence checks to evaluate routing modes.

E. Performance Metrics

  • Reliability, tactical deadline-miss rate, SATCOM offload, 5G-path latency jitter, and mean latency are reported for each independent trial.Latency jitter is p99−p50 for end-to-end latency on the 5G path.Source: E. Performance Metrics · p. 4

F. Experimental and Statistical Methodology

  • Common random numbers expose each routing mode to the same seeded fading, rain, outage, and traffic draws, enabling paired SDN-versus-static comparisons.The paired test evaluates mean per-trial metric differences and reports a 95% confidence interval.Source: F. Experimental and Statistical… · p. 4
  • Each setting uses 60 independent trials of 50,000 packets, with convergence sweeps supporting both choices on the reliability metric.At 60 trials, the reliability confidence-interval half-width is below 0.1 percentage points; mean reliability shifts by less than 0.1 points across tested packet counts.Source: 3) Sample sizes and convergence · p. 4

3) Sample sizes and convergence:

Sensitivity sweeps vary channel and traffic conditions, while regional runs hold CSG topology and SATCOM geometry fixed so weather distributions are the varying input.

3) Sample sizes and convergence:

  • Rician K-factor, ship spacing, and tactical traffic share are swept separately, while a joint bad-state-probability and K-factor sweep maps where the dual-path advantage is largest.Sweeps use 60 independent trials and report 95% confidence-interval bands.Source: 4) Sensitivity and joint sweeps · p. 4

4) Sensitivity and joint sweeps:

  • The baseline configuration is rerun for Norfolk, the Norwegian Sea, the Philippine Sea, and the North Pacific storm track, varying only the regional weather record.The same CSG topology and SATCOM geometry are used across regions.Source: 5) Multi-region study · p. 4

5) Multi-region study:

  • Table III covers per-mode reliability and latency for the Norfolk baseline, with SATCOM offload shown only for SDN.The caption notes that offload is trivially 0% or 100% for static modes.Source: Table III · p. 5
  • Table IV presents paired SDN-versus-static reliability comparisons for 60 trials in percentage points.Source: Table IV · p. 5

IV. Results

SDN dual-path routing delivers higher reliability than either static routing mode, and its advantage persists under increasing burst faults. AMC improves 5G tactical viability as SINR falls, trading peak throughput for robustness.

A. Routing-Mode Comparison

  • 124 ms is the static_5g mean latency, compared with 612 ms for static_satcom and 515 ms for SDN; no static_satcom packet meets the 100 ms tactical deadline.GEO propagation dominates SATCOM latency, while controller processing and encryption together add less than a millisecond per packet.Source: A. Routing-Mode Comparison · p. 5
  • 93.09% mean reliability for SDN compares with 36.22% for 5G-only and 89.87% for SATCOM-only; paired gains are +56.87 pp and +3.22 pp, respectively.SATCOM-only misses every tactical deadline, while SDN routes 19.8% of tactical traffic over SATCOM; its 73.97% tactical deadline-miss rate is close to static_5g's 73.93%.Source: Figure 2 · p. 5, A. Routing-Mode Comparison · p. 5

B. Behavior Under Varying Link Faults

  • With AMC enabled, tactical deadline misses fall to 74%; AMC yields ≈49 Mbps mean throughput versus ≈112 Mbps for fixed-MCS on its successful packets.The fixed high-MCS scheme misses the tactical deadline on every packet; AMC lowers MCS rather than dropping packets as SINR falls, trading peak rate for predictability.Source: Figure 3 · p. 5, 1) AMC Impact on 5G Performance · p. 5
  • As Gilbert–Elliott bad-state probability πB rises, SDN reliability remains above static_satcom, and delivery loss is mitigated relative to static_5g.Failover activates progressively, and SATCOM's share of delivered traffic grows monotonically across the sweep.Source: B. Behavior Under Varying Link Faults · p. 5

1) AMC Impact on 5G Performance:

SDN reliability varies by less than 0.5 pp across the tested Rician K range, while greater formation spacing reduces 5G utilization. Rain-related BER rises sharply above the rain-fade margin.

2) Formation Geometry and 5G Path Utilization:

  • Table V reports per-region SDN metrics using weather sampled from a year of 15-minute observations in each region.The supplied table caption gives its scope but not metric values.Source: Table V · p. 6
  • SDN reliability varies by under 0.5 pp across K ∈[0, 16], while 5G utilization falls from ≈35% at 0.5× formation spacing to under 10% at 3×.As ships disperse, fewer pairs remain within high- and mid-band 5G range envelopes, and the controller migrates traffic to SATCOM.Source: Figure 4 · p. 6, 2) Formation Geometry and 5G Path… · p. 6
  • BER rises sharply above the rain-fade margin as sampled rain rates drive Ku-band SATCOM attenuation consistent with the predicted slant-path curve.Hourly reliability dips track each region's empirical rain-rate distribution and are otherwise stable across the diurnal cycle.Source: 3) Rain-Fade Effects on SATCOM · p. 6

3) Rain-Fade Effects on SATCOM:

SDN remains the highest-reliability mode across the four tested maritime regions, with reliability varying by regional weather. Its gain over the better static baseline is largest under joint low-K, high-burst-fault stress.

4) Joint Operating Region:

  • SDN reliability ranges from 88.4% in the North Pacific storm track to 93.1% in Norfolk and remains the highest-reliability mode in all four regions.The Norwegian Sea polar-edge region reaches 89.1%, and the Philippine Sea reaches 91.3%; only the regional weather record varies in this comparison.Source: 5) Multi-Region Validation · p. 6

3) Rain-Fade Effects on SATCOM:

  • The SDN reliability gain over the better static baseline is largest in the joint stress region of low Rician K and high πB, and small but positive in clear-sky conditions.Fig. 5b maps the gain across both πB and Rician K.Source: Figure 5 · p. 6, 4) Joint Operating Region · p. 6

5) Multi-Region Validation:

  • Fig. 5a compares Ku-band SATCOM BER with the ITU-R P.618/P.838 prediction across rain rates; Fig. 5b maps SDN reliability gain across (πB, K).The caption identifies the panels' contents but does not provide additional outcome values.Source: Figure 5 · p. 6

V. Conclusion

  • The simulator couples Rician 5G with AMC, Ku-band SATCOM with ITU-R P.618 rain fade, and Gilbert–Elliott availability; future work includes lower-orbit satellite integration to recover tactical-latency margins.The conclusion also identifies adversarial jamming, snow attenuation, time-correlated rain, and waveform-level SDR modeling as future work.Source: §V · p. 6
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