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Acta Aeronautica et Astronautica Sinica ›› 2023, Vol. 44 ›› Issue (24): 328600-328600.doi: 10.7527/S1000-6893.2023.28600

• Electronics and Electrical Engineering and Control • Previous Articles    

Sequence-based fully-connected network topology design method for LEO constellation

Yao XIAO1,2, Shuai GUO1,2(), Zhen YANG1,2, Yazhong LUO1,2   

  1. 1.College of Aerospace Science and Engineering,National University of Defense Technology,Changsha 410073,China
    2.Hunan Key Laboratory of Intelligent Planning and Simulation for Aerospace Missions,Changsha 410073,China
  • Received:2023-02-22 Revised:2023-04-03 Accepted:2023-05-06 Online:2023-05-16 Published:2023-05-15
  • Contact: Shuai GUO E-mail:guoshuai14@nudt.edu.cn
  • Supported by:
    National Natural Science Foundation of China(12125207);the from Technology Innovation Team of Manned Space Engineering

Abstract:

The fully-connected topology of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) hybrid constellation is one of key factors to ensure the required communication capability. However, the solution space expands exponentially with the increase of the number of satellites in designing the topology structure, which makes the problem of solving an optimal topology structure more difficult. In this paper, a sequence-based fully-connected topology design method is proposed for the overall or partial satellites of LEO hybrid constellation. The proposed method overcomes the limitation of constellation configuration using the traditional topology design strategy and the uncertainty of full connectivity. Firstly, a constellation Inter-Satellite Link (ISL) evaluation matrix is defined, and a mathematical model for the constellation network topology is established based on the graph theory. Then, considering the requirement of fully-connectivity, a sequence-based topology design method is proposed, which transforms the adjacency matrix solving problem into a fully-connected sequence design problem. The Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm is used to generate and optimize the fully-connected sequence. Finally, the topologies of the LEO hybrid constellation and the local satellite collection in Starlink are designed to illustrate the advantages of the proposed method in terms of connectivity and verify its applicability to any distributed satellite collection. The results show that the proposed method can meet the full connectivity requirements when the number of ISLs of each satellite is extremely small. Meanwhile, the method proposed is not limited by the configuration of constellation or satellite collection, and can be used to design the strong connectivity topology for entire constellation or local satellite collection.

Key words: Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation, topology construction, Inter-Satellite Link (ISL), full connectivity, mega-constellation

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