Logo
ScienceStack
Table of Contents
Fetching ...
Sign In

OrbitTransit: Traffic Delivery and Diffusion for Earth Observation via Satellite Mobility

Haoyuan Zhao, Long Chen, Yi Ching Chou, Hao Fang, Jiangchuan Liu

Abstract

The emerging demand for Earth observation (EO) to address environmental challenges has driven unprecedented growth in its primary carrier, Low Earth Orbit satellites, in recent years. Ground stations (GSs), the egress points of these networks, are congested due to the massive volume of EO traffic, and their deployment is constrained by geographic, political, and budgetary factors. Although inter-satellite links (ISLs) can partially relieve this congestion by forwarding traffic to alternative GSs, existing ISL-based approaches can hardly address traffic contention caused by biased GS distribution and may also raise sustainability concerns due to prolonged ISL paths. In this paper, we propose OrbitTransit, a pickup-carry-offload (PCO) approach that leverages satellite mobility for data \textit{delivery} and integrates ISLs for traffic \textit{diffusion} to alleviate the resource contention inherent in PCO delivery. The proposed orbit-as-node framework and contention-avoidant delivery jointly determine the optimal hybrid PCO-ISL path, minimizing energy consumption and balancing GS traffic. Extensive experiments show that OrbitTransit reduces battery consumption by $47.16\%$, decreases task failures by $1.09\times$, and improves GS load balancing compared with state-of-the-art GS selection and routing algorithms.

OrbitTransit: Traffic Delivery and Diffusion for Earth Observation via Satellite Mobility

Abstract

The emerging demand for Earth observation (EO) to address environmental challenges has driven unprecedented growth in its primary carrier, Low Earth Orbit satellites, in recent years. Ground stations (GSs), the egress points of these networks, are congested due to the massive volume of EO traffic, and their deployment is constrained by geographic, political, and budgetary factors. Although inter-satellite links (ISLs) can partially relieve this congestion by forwarding traffic to alternative GSs, existing ISL-based approaches can hardly address traffic contention caused by biased GS distribution and may also raise sustainability concerns due to prolonged ISL paths. In this paper, we propose OrbitTransit, a pickup-carry-offload (PCO) approach that leverages satellite mobility for data \textit{delivery} and integrates ISLs for traffic \textit{diffusion} to alleviate the resource contention inherent in PCO delivery. The proposed orbit-as-node framework and contention-avoidant delivery jointly determine the optimal hybrid PCO-ISL path, minimizing energy consumption and balancing GS traffic. Extensive experiments show that OrbitTransit reduces battery consumption by , decreases task failures by , and improves GS load balancing compared with state-of-the-art GS selection and routing algorithms.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 25 sections, 21 equations, 24 figures, 2 algorithms.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background of LSNs
  3. Measurement and Insights
  4. Lessons from ISL-based Algorithms
  5. Lessons from PCO Delivery
  6. Lessons from Spatiotemporal Dynamics in Space-Ground Networks
  7. Takeaways
  8. LSN Topology Modeling
  9. LSN Topology and Task Model
  10. Energy Model
  11. Constraints and Problem Formulation
  12. OrbitTransit Methodology
  13. Orbit-as-Node Framework
  14. OAN-based Traffic Diffusion
  15. Contention-Avoidant Delivery
  16. ...and 10 more sections

Figures (24)

  • Figure 1: Overview of the typical backhaul path in Low Earth Orbit satellite networks.
  • Figure 2: Number of assigned tasks and queuing delays for the top-10 loaded ground stations.
  • Figure 3: Satellite onboard battery consumption and routing path length under two GS selection algorithms.
  • Figure 4: The distribution of ground station coverage and population densities.
  • Figure 5: Networked regions based on human settlement theory.
  • ...and 19 more figures