Communication Concepts for Self-Organizing Distributed Small Satellite Systems

自组织分布式小型卫星系统的通信概念

• 批准号: 329050216
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Björn Scheuermann
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lehrstuhl für Informatik VII: Robotik und Telematik
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2015-12-31 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/329050216?language=en
• 关键词: Communication; Concepts; Self; Organizing; Distributed

Space flight is facing a paradigm shift: groups of small, cooperating satellites are more and more considered as a promising alternative to classical monolithical satellite systems. This allows for more flexible missions and new application scenarios, in combination with reduced cost and improved resilience, but at the same time demands new and - compared to the state of the art in the field - significantly more complex communication and coordination mechanisms. The proposed project will establish a basis for communication mechanisms in future systems of cooperating small satellites. The aim is a robust overall system which makes efficient use of communication bandwidth and energy and which can deal with and compensate (partial) faults. It is, for instance, necessary to exchange status and position information between satellites, to transfer sensor data to the ground in an energy-efficient way and to communicate commands reliably to the satellite network.The project uses two specific scenarios from the area of earth observation as a starting point and focuses on questions of communication protocol design in such systems. The first scenario considers a formation of earth observation satellites, that is, a group of satellites which stay relatively close together and cooperatively adjust their orientation. Together they perform optical or magnetical measurements and make use of their position offsets for simultaneous measurements at multiple locations or from different angles. The second scenario is based on a satellite constellation, i.e., satellites on spatially widely separated orbits, which track the current positions of transponders (e.g., on trains, ships or airplanes) in a vast area. This scenario therefore comes with significantly different, but nevertheless likewise practically relevant requirements.In both cases the specific characteristics of small satellite networks will be leveraged to increase the communication efficiency. These characteristics include predictable contact times between network stations and knowledge about the amount, origin and structure of aquired data. In comparison to other fields, the availability and consumption of (solar) energy and other resources can also be predicted well in advance. This can be used for transmission planning or for cooperative data aggregation between satellites. The designed protocols and mechanisms will be evaluated analytically, through simulations and in experiments.

太空飞行正面临一种范式转变：一组小型、合作的卫星越来越被认为是传统单片卫星系统的一种有前途的替代方案。这使得特派团和新的应用方案更加灵活，同时降低了成本，提高了复原力，但同时需要新的沟通和协调机制--与外地最先进的通信和协调机制相比--要复杂得多。拟议的项目将为未来合作小卫星系统中的通信机制奠定基础。目标是一个健壮的整体系统，它能有效地利用通信带宽和能量，并能处理和补偿(部分)故障。例如，需要在卫星之间交换状态和位置信息，以节能的方式将传感器数据传输到地面，并将命令可靠地传递到卫星网络。该项目以对地观测领域的两个具体场景为出发点，重点研究了此类系统中的通信协议设计问题。第一种方案考虑了地球观测卫星的编队，即一组保持相对较近距离并合作调整方向的卫星。它们一起执行光学或磁学测量，并利用它们的位置偏移量在多个位置或从不同角度进行同时测量。第二种设想是以卫星星座为基础的，即在空间上相距甚远的轨道上的卫星，它跟踪大片区域内应答器的当前位置(例如，在火车、轮船或飞机上)。在这两种情况下，都将利用小型卫星网络的具体特点来提高通信效率。这些特征包括网站之间可预测的联系时间，以及对所获得数据的数量、来源和结构的了解。与其他领域相比，(太阳能)能源和其他资源的可获得性和消耗量也可以提前很好地预测。这可用于传输规划或卫星之间的协作数据聚合。所设计的协议和机制将通过模拟和实验进行分析评估。