Satellite Communication Resources Management in a Earth Observation Federation of Constellations

Hénoïk Willot, Jean-Loup Farges, Gauthier Picard, Philippe Pavero

Abstract: This paper addresses a new problem arising from the novel concept of multi-mission federation in Earth observation. This problem arises because of the development of several competing ground station networks that could be used by a component of federated missions called Satellite Communication and Resource Management System (SCRMS). Among the functions of SCRMS selection of contacts is a challenging decision problem. It is an optimization problem with Boolean variables corresponding to the selection of some contacts among potential contacts. Constraints enforce the fulfillment of the communication needs of the satellites. The considered criteria are the communication cost and the conflicts and jamming between satellites when communicating with sites, optimized lexicographically. We propose a linear program, several incomplete search schemes and greedy allocation schemes to address this problem, and evaluate them on realistic systems. Results indicate that the linear program complies with computation time requirements and produces better contact selection plans than other optimization schemes.

External IDs:dblp:conf/cpaior/WillotFPP25