Inter-plane satellite matching in dense LEO constellations
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Dense constellations of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) small satellites are envisioned to extend the coverage of IoT applications via the inter-satellite link (ISL). Within the same orbital plane, the inter-satellite distances are preserved and the links are rather stable. In contrast, the relative motion between planes makes the inter-plane ISL challenging. In a dense set-up, each spacecraft has several satellites in its coverage volume, but the time duration of each of these links is small and the maximum number of active connections is limited by the hardware. We analyze the matching problem that arises when trying to use the inter-plane ISL for unicast transmissions, with the aim of minimizing the total cost. The problem with any number of orbital planes and up to two transceivers is addressed, and we provide a near-optimal solution that is shown to perform very close to the optimal one. We also propose a Markovian algorithm to maintain the on-going connections as long as possible. This algorithm greatly reduces the switching and the computational complexity up to 176x with respect to optimal solutions without compromising the total cost. Our model includes power adaptation and optimizes the network energy consumption as the exemplary cost in the evaluations, but any other QoS-oriented KPI can be used instead.
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