Delay and Disruption Tolerant Authentication for Space Communications

Some space communication scenarios, such as Deep Space communication networks, represent an example of Delay and Disruption Tolerant Networks, which may experience dynamic, long-delay links, and outages. Networks of this kind require a strong re-engineering of many of the protocols for data transmission usually adopted in traditional, terrestrial data networks. The Bundle Protocol has been proposed by the IETF as an overlay communication infrastructure, to cope with the heterogeneous components of a Disruption Tolerant Network; however, there are still many open issues that need to be analyzed. This paper focuses on the impact of delay and disruption tolerant networks on the efficiency and robustness of authentication mechanisms, and discusses some solutions possibly suitable to the Bundle architecture.