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Cascade optimization design of inter-satellite link enhanced with adaptability in future GNSS satellite networks

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Abstract

Inter-satellite communication and inter-satellite ranging are the foundation of autonomous navigation for satellite navigation systems. Due to cost limitations, it has been proposed in recent years to equip each satellite with one spot beam antenna, which points to different satellites according to a polling mechanism, resulting in an intermittently connected satellite network. This poses the problem of how to design the inter-satellite link (ISL) contact plan, which determines the evolution of network topology and has important effects on system performance. We propose a new framework for the ISL contact plan design in satellite navigation systems. Considering contact plan design as a multi-parameter and multi-objective optimization problem, the cascade optimization design (COD) is proposed as a method simple to implement and optimize the parameters of the contact plan. COD considers network load and geometry of satellites and has a good adaptability. In the proposed framework, both communication and measurement requirements are taken into account while the contact sequence and the slot length are optimized in two steps. Simulation results show that COD guarantees zero packet drops and achieves the least average delay with a selected network load. When the packet arrival rate is 0.45 packets/s, the packet drop ratio of COD is zero, while that of the traditional simulated annealing design (SAD) is 2.58%. The delay of COD is 22.97 s, which is only two-fifth of the SAD value of 58.77 s. At the same time, using COD the average autonomous navigation weighted dilution of precision decreases from 1.4408 to 0.9671. COD also has strong robustness and performance regardless of the onboard buffer size.

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Acknowledgment

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 41604016. Our special thanks to the colleagues of the Satellite Navigation R&D Center of National University of Defense Technology for the support, advices, and assistance. We very much appreciate the help and suggestions of two anonymous reviewers. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge the help from the Editor in Chief, Alfred Leick, who had the patience each time to help and participate in correction level in the whole process.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronic Science and Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410073, China

    Jinhui Huang, Wenxiang Liu, Yingxue Su & Feixue Wang

Authors
  1. Jinhui Huang
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  2. Wenxiang Liu
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  3. Yingxue Su
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  4. Feixue Wang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jinhui Huang.

Appendix

Appendix

We create a protocol which summarizes the step-by-step implementation of the proposed technique. The CODPROT (cascade optimization design protocol) is as follows:

Frame format

We define the management frame for ISL contact plan. The frame format is shown in Fig. 9. The SatID field contains the destination satellite of the management frame. The DataType field is set to 0 × 01, which tells that the current frame is an ISL contact plan management frame. The StateStartWeek and the StateStartSec fields contain the start time of the management information in the frame. The StateEndWeek and the StateEndSec fields contain the end time of the management information in the frame. The NumOfSlots identifies the number of slots in a CPP. The SlotLength identifies the slot length. The ConnectedSat 1, ConnectedSat 2, …, ConnectedSat K fields identify the contact sequence. The ConnectedSat i field contains the satellite to connect during the ith slot.

Fig. 9
figure 9

Frame format of the management frame for ISL contact plan

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ISL contact plan management

To reduce the computation on the satellite, the calculation of contact plan is conducted by the ground station. The COD method proposed in this paper is used in the calculation. Then, the contact plan is uploaded to the satellite. The ISL contact plan management procedures are as follows:

  1. 1.

    The ISL contact plans of all the satellites are designed by the ground station using the proposed COD method.

  2. 2.

    The ground station fills the management frame with ISL contact plan calculated in the previous step.

  3. 3.

    The ground station uploads each of the management frames to the corresponding satellite. It should be noted that the management frame should be uploaded before its start time.

  4. 4.

    The management frame is stored after it is received by its destination satellite.

  5. 5.

    The management frame takes effect when its start time comes. The satellite sets up ISL with other satellites according to the management frame.

  6. 6.

    The next management frame takes effect when its start time comes. The end time of the current frame should be the same as the start time of the next frame.

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Huang, J., Liu, W., Su, Y. et al. Cascade optimization design of inter-satellite link enhanced with adaptability in future GNSS satellite networks. GPS Solut 22, 44 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10291-018-0707-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10291-018-0707-0

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