Battery-Aware Contact Plan Design for LEO Satellite Constellations: The Ulloriaq Case Study

Power demands of communication technologies between LEO small-satellites are difficult to counterbalance by solar infeed and on-board battery storage, due to size and weight limitations. This makes the problem of battery-powered inter-satellite communication a very difficult one. Its management requires a profound understanding as well as techniques for a proper extrapolation of the electric power budget as part of the inter-satellite and satellite-to-ground communication design. We discuss how the construction of contact plans in delay tolerant networking can profit from a sophisticated model of the on-board battery behavior. This model accounts for both nonlinearities in battery behavior as well as stochastic fluctuations in charge, so as to control the risk of battery depletion. We take an hypothetical Ulloriaq constellation based on the GOM X–4 satellites from GomSpace as a reference for our studies.

[1]  Juan A. Fraire,et al.  Routing-aware fair contact plan design for predictable delay tolerant networks , 2015, Ad Hoc Networks.

[2]  Morten Bisgaard,et al.  Mastering operational limitations of LEO satellites – The GomX-3 approach , 2018, Acta Astronautica.

[3]  Guillermo Leguizamón,et al.  Preliminary results of an evolutionary approach towards Contact Plan design for satellite DTNs , 2015, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Wireless for Space and Extreme Environments (WiSEE).

[4]  Vinton G. Cerf,et al.  Delay-Tolerant Networking Architecture , 2007, RFC.

[5]  Min Sheng,et al.  Channel-Aware Mission Scheduling in Broadband Data Relay Satellite Networks , 2018, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[6]  J. Clausen,et al.  Branch and Bound Algorithms-Principles and Examples , 2003 .

[7]  Yifan Zhou,et al.  Inter-satellite communication and ranging link assignment for navigation satellite systems , 2018, GPS Solutions.

[8]  Pablo G. Madoery,et al.  On the Design and Analysis of Fair Contact Plans in Predictable Delay-Tolerant Networks , 2014, IEEE Sensors Journal.

[9]  Min Sheng,et al.  Toward high throughput contact plan design in resource-limited small satellite networks , 2016, 2016 IEEE 27th Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC).

[10]  Morten Bisgaard,et al.  Battery-aware scheduling in low orbit: the GomX–3 case , 2018, Formal Aspects of Computing.

[11]  Juan A. Fraire,et al.  DtnSim: Bridging the Gap between Simulation and Implementation of Space-Terrestrial DTNs , 2017, 2017 6th International Conference on Space Mission Challenges for Information Technology (SMC-IT).

[12]  Min Sheng,et al.  Mission Aware Contact Plan Design in Resource-Limited Small Satellite Networks , 2017, IEEE Transactions on Communications.

[13]  Juan A. Fraire,et al.  Traffic-aware contact plan design for disruption-tolerant space sensor networks , 2016, Ad Hoc Networks.

[14]  Cui-Qin Dai,et al.  Genetically Inspired Contact Plan Design in Small Satellite Networks , 2017, 2017 International Conference on Computer, Information and Telecommunication Systems (CITS).

[15]  Holger Hermanns,et al.  How Is Your Satellite Doing? Battery Kinetics with Recharging and Uncertainty , 2017, Leibniz Trans. Embed. Syst..

[16]  Min Sheng,et al.  Dynamic Contact Plan Design in Broadband Satellite Networks With Varying Contact Capacity , 2016, IEEE Communications Letters.

[17]  Boudewijn R. Haverkort,et al.  Which battery model to use? , 2008, IET Softw..

[18]  Feixue Wang,et al.  Cascade optimization design of inter-satellite link enhanced with adaptability in future GNSS satellite networks , 2018, GPS Solutions.

[19]  Guillermo Leguizamón,et al.  An evolutionary approach towards contact plan design for disruption-tolerant satellite networks , 2017, Appl. Soft Comput..

[20]  Juan A. Fraire.  Introducing Contact Plan Designer: A Planning Tool for DTN-Based Space-Terrestrial Networks , 2017, 2017 6th International Conference on Space Mission Challenges for Information Technology (SMC-IT).

[21]  Yuning Chen,et al.  Time division inter‐satellite link topology generation problem: Modeling and solution , 2018, Int. J. Satell. Commun. Netw..

[22]  Jun Yang,et al.  Timeslot scheduling of inter-satellite links based on a system of a narrow beam with time division , 2017, GPS Solutions.

[23]  Laurence A. Wolsey,et al.  Cutting planes in integer and mixed integer programming , 2002, Discret. Appl. Math..

[24]  Juan A. Fraire,et al.  On the design of fair contact plans in predictable Delay-Tolerant Networks , 2013, IEEE International Conference on Wireless for Space and Extreme Environments.

[25]  Yong Sun,et al.  Local information-based congestion control scheme for space delay/disruption tolerant networks , 2015, Wirel. Networks.

[26]  Juan A. Fraire,et al.  Design challenges in contact plans for disruption-tolerant satellite networks , 2015, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[27]  Buddy Walls,et al.  Constellations, clusters, and communication technology: Expanding small satellite access to space , 2016, 2016 IEEE Aerospace Conference.

[28]  Narendra Karmarkar,et al.  A new polynomial-time algorithm for linear programming , 1984, Comb..