Design and Distributed Autonomous Scheduling Strategy of Satellite Constellation with High Frequency and Long Duration

Abstract

With the increasing communication and remote sensing demand, a constellation composed of multiple low-orbit satellites is usually designed. However, it is faced with the problems of how to achieve coverage with high frequency, long duration, and fully autonomous for a sudden ground target. Given the difficulty of the conventional constellation to achieve the above capabilities at a lower cost, a broken-chain constellation is proposed. The broken-chain constellation maintains a chain-like configuration in space to achieve better coverage uniformity, which can reduce the number of satellites. Aiming at the fully autonomous operation of the constellation, a distributed autonomous scheduling strategy is designed considering the chain-like characteristics. Compared with the traditional centralized scheduling method, this strategy not only effectively reduces the computational cost but also improves the dynamic response to the observation of sudden ground targets.