Near Real-Time Remote Sensing Based on Satellite Internet: Architectures, Key Techniques, and Experimental Progress

Abstract

Remote sensing has become an essential tool for geological exploration, disaster monitoring, emergency rescue, and environmental supervision, while the limited number of remote sensing satellites and ground stations restricts the timeliness of remote sensing services. Satellite Internet has features of large bandwidth, low latency, and wide coverage, which can provide ubiquitous high-speed access for time-sensitive remote sensing users. This study proposes a near real-time remote sensing (NRRS) architecture, which allows satellites to transmit remote sensing data via inter-satellite links and offload to the Earth Stations from the satellite that moves overhead. The NRRS architecture has the advantages of instant response, ubiquitous access, and intelligent integration. Based on a test communication constellation, a vehicle-mounted Satcom on-the-move experiment was conducted to validate the presented NRRS architecture. The results show that the whole process from demand collection to image acquisition takes no more than 25 min, which provides an engineering reference for the subsequent implementation of near real-time remote sensing.