On the scalability of battery‐aware contact plan design for LEO satellite constellations

Abstract

Summary Size and weight limitations of low‐Earth orbit (LEO) small satellites make their operation rest on a fine balance between solar power infeed and power demands of supporting communication technologies, buffered by on‐board battery storage. As a result, the problem of planning battery‐powered intersatellite communication is a very difficult one. Nevertheless, there is a growing trend toward constellations and mega‐constellations that are to be managed using sophisticated software support. In earlier work, we have discussed how the effective construction of contact plans in delay‐tolerant satellite networking can profit from a refined model of the on‐board battery behavior. This paper presents a profound study of the scalability of the approach and discusses how to tailor it to the needs arising in the management of mega‐constellations, together with a variety of improvements to the base approach. Results show that efficient mega‐constellation operations are compromised, encouraging further research on the area.

CubeSat Mission Scheduling Method Considering Operational Reliability

“…Satellite scheduling models are mainly divided into three categories: mathematical programming models (MPMs) [4,5], graph theory models (GTMs) [6,7], and constraint satisfaction problem models (CSPMs) [8,9]. In the existing satellite mission scheduling research, the objective functions formulated include maximizing mission profit [10,11], maximizing the sum of mission priorities [12,13], maximizing data throughput [14,15], and maximizing image resolution in Earth observation (EO) missions [16].…”