Architecting a Communication Satellite Product Line

Abstract

Current unfavorable market conditions have shifted the preference of commercial communication satellite operators from large spacecraft systems with high bandwidth capacities, to small and medium size spacecraft. However, most satellite manufacturers have not caught up yet with this trend and are still positioned as providers of large capacity satellite systems. This paper investigates the application of product family concepts to the design of commercial satellites in an effort to formulate an approach that allows a manufacturer to develop a series of satellites with varying sizes based on similar architectures. Applying product family concepts could allow satellite manufacturers to lower cost, shorten development cycles, and reduce market risk by catering to a number of market segments. This paper formulates the satellite product line design problem into a multiobjective optimization problem that characterizes the tradeoffs and resolves the tension between product line commonalities and the performance of each of the product line individual satellites. This research couples a Genetic Algorithm (GA), which is an evolutionary global search method that mimics the behavior of biological populations, with a satellite sizing model to find optimal product lines with common technology choices. The preliminary results demonstrate the effectiveness of the multiobjective optimization approach in applying product family concepts to the design of commercial communication satellites. NOMENCLATURE