Orbital Edge Computing
It is shown quantitatively that nanosatellite constellation capabilities are determined by physical system constraints, and an OEC architecture can reduce ground infrastructure over 24x compared to a bent-pipe architecture, and pipelines can reduce system edge processing latency over 617x.
Abstract
Advances in nanosatellite technology and a declining cost of access to space have fostered an emergence of large constellations of sensor-equipped satellites in low-Earth orbit. Many of these satellite systems operate under a "bent-pipe" architecture, in which ground stations send commands to orbit and satellites reply with raw data. In this work, we observe that a bent-pipe architecture for Earth-observing satellites breaks down as constellation population increases. Communication is limited by the physical configuration and constraints of the system over time, such as ground station location, nanosatellite antenna size, and energy harvested on orbit. We show quantitatively that nanosatellite constellation capabilities are determined by physical system constraints.