LRAR: A Lightweight Risk-Avoidance Routing Algorithm for LEO Satellite Networks

With low latency and wide coverage, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks can provide network services for places that cannot be reached by the terrestrial network and become a critical supplement to the traditional network, playing an increasingly important role. While the wide coverage and broadcasting enable LEO satellite networks (LSNs) accessible to more devices, this also raises the risk of being attacked by potential adversaries. Previous research on secure routing is either mainly based on the design of encryption-based algorithms or is only suitable for the relative static topology of the traditional terrestrial networks. However, given limited computational resources and the highly dynamic changes of the LEO satellite, encryption-based algorithms can hardly meet the demands of LSNs. Unlike these works, this paper proposes a lightweight risk-avoidance routing algorithm (LRAR). It allows users' data packets to be forwarded by avoiding specified high-risk areas to reduce the risk of user data being attacked. As can be seen in extensive simulation experiments, the LRAR implements results close to the optimal path with little overhead. Also, it enhances security and flexible extensibility.