On-Board Switching and Routing Advanced Technology Study

Future satellite communications is expected to be fully integrated into National and Global Information Infrastructures (NII/GII). These infrastructures will carry multi gigabit-per-second data rates, with integral switching and routing of constituent data elements. The satellite portion of these infrastructures must, therefore, be more than pipes through the sky. The satellite portion will also be required to perform very high speed routing and switching of these data elements to enable efficient broad area coverage to many home and corporate users. The technology to achieve the on-board switching and routing must be selected and developed specifically for satellite application within the next few years. This report presents evaluation of potential technologies for on-board switching and routing applications.