The Saratoga data transfer protocol
at Sourceforge | from Surrey

SSTL's TechDemoSat-1 satellite in orbit, showing steerable downlink horn antenna, July 2014.
Saratoga is in orbit on SSTL's TechDemoSat-1
Saratoga is a fast data transfer protocol for hop-by-hop transfers on privately-owned networks - including dedicated sensor networks and the intermittently-connected networks used for delay-tolerant networking. Saratoga is intended for private dedicated point-to-point links, where packet loss is caused by errors and corruption, not by congestion, and speed and efficiency are paramount.

Saratoga was first developed at Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, and has been in daily operational use for a decade to download remote-sensing imagery from the satellites built for the >Disaster Monitoring Constellation. Saratoga has been developed further in cooperation with NASA Glenn Research Center. Saratoga is onboard SSTL's TechDemoSat-1.

Saratoga is introduced in:

Video describing the history and development of Saratoga.

The technical design of Saratoga is documented in a number of internet-drafts for the Internet Engineering Task Force, intended for experimental status:

Publically available code, developed in Sourceforge CVS, includes:

See also the Saratoga project pages and the Saratoga wiki.

Saratoga has been developed and tested over the past few years:

Saratoga has been evaluated for use in radio astronomy applications:

Saratoga has previously also been used for Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) Bundle Protocol transfers. Using Saratoga, we are the first to demonstrate Bundle Protocol transfers from space for the Interplanetary Internet.

Development on Saratoga and its specification in internet-drafts grew from the initial collaboration involved in working with CLEO, the Cisco router in Low Earth Orbit.

Saratoga is named for the USS Saratoga, sunk near Bikini Atoll and now a popular diving site.


Lloyd Wood (lloydwood@users.sourceforge.net)