Your Mega-Constellations Can Be Slim:A Cost-Effective Approach for Constructing Survivable and Performant LEO Satellite Networks

TL;DR

The paper tackles how to design survivable and performant LEO satellite networks with the minimum number of satellites by formulating the SPLD optimization and solving it with MEGAREDUCE, a polynomial-time, requirement-driven mechanism. It also extends SPLD to handle delay constraints through a directed layered graph and per-demand subproblems, enabling explicit end-to-end latency control. The authors provide a formal system model with time-slotted visibility, capacity constraints, and survivability measured via edge-disjoint paths, plus a trace-driven evaluation showing cost-effective, on-demand constellation deployment and maintenance guidance. Collectively, the work demonstrates that high-reliability and performance can be achieved with leaner mega-constellations, supporting incremental deployment and sustainable operation for future satellite Internet.

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate an important research problem facing the upcoming satellite Internet: from a network perspective, how many satellites exactly do we need to construct a survivable and performant LSN? To answer this question, we first formulate the survivable and performant LSN design (SPLD) problem, which aims to find the minimum number of needed satellites to construct an LSN that can provide sufficient amount of redundant paths, required link capacity and acceptable latency for traffic carried by the LSN. Second, to efficiently solve the tricky SPLD problem, we propose MEGAREDUCE, a requirement-driven constellation optimization mechanism, which can calculate feasible solutions for SPLD in polynomial time. Finally, we conduct extensive trace-driven simulations to verify MEGAREDUCE's cost-effectiveness in constructing survivable and performant LSNs on demand, and showcase how MEGAREDUCE can help optimize the incremental deployment and long-term maintenance of future satellite Internet.

Figures (2)

• Figure 1: Typical architecture of LEO satellite networks (LSN).
• Figure 2: The original network structure with two orbits and six satellites in total, and its layered presentation when $L=5$.