Design of Delay-Tolerant Transport Protocol (DTTP) and its evaluation for Mars

We present Delay-Tolerant Transport Protocol (DTTP) which enables fast and reliable communications in deep space. The proposed protocol regularly measures its performance through available paths towards destination, and develops its routing strategy accordingly. We evaluate DTTP performance across a wide range of network scenarios that pertain to Mars-to-Earth distances. Based on simulation results, we show that: (i) Delay-Tolerant Networking does not necessarily imply belated communications; (ii) DTTP can efficiently support reliable data transfers in challenged networks; and (iii) dynamic routing is feasible in space.