OrbitTransit: Traffic Delivery and Diffusion for Earth Observation via Satellite Mobility

2026-04-05

AI Summary

This study addresses the challenge of limited downlink capacity for low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite Earth observation data, which is exacerbated by uneven ground station distribution and resource contention, often leading to mission failure. To overcome this, the authors propose OrbitTransit, a novel framework that models satellite orbits as logical nodes and integrates a “Pickup-Carry-Offload” (PCO) mechanism with inter-satellite link (ISL)-based traffic diffusion. OrbitTransit jointly optimizes energy consumption and ground station load balancing through contention-aware path planning and a hybrid PCO-ISL routing algorithm. Experimental results demonstrate that, compared to existing approaches, the proposed system reduces battery consumption by 47.16% and decreases mission failure rates by 52.2%, significantly enhancing both transmission efficiency and load balancing performance.

Abstract

The emerging demand for Earth observation (EO) to address environmental challenges has driven unprecedented growth in its primary carrier, Low Earth Orbit satellites, in recent years. Ground stations (GSs), the egress points of these networks, are congested due to the massive volume of EO traffic, and their deployment is constrained by geographic, political, and budgetary factors. Although inter-satellite links (ISLs) can partially relieve this congestion by forwarding traffic to alternative GSs, existing ISL-based approaches can hardly address traffic contention caused by biased GS distribution and may also raise sustainability concerns due to prolonged ISL paths. In this paper, we propose OrbitTransit, a pickup-carry-offload (PCO) approach that leverages satellite mobility for data \textit{delivery} and integrates ISLs for traffic \textit{diffusion} to alleviate the resource contention inherent in PCO delivery. The proposed orbit-as-node framework and contention-avoidant delivery jointly determine the optimal hybrid PCO-ISL path, minimizing energy consumption and balancing GS traffic. Extensive experiments show that OrbitTransit reduces battery consumption by $47.16\%$, decreases task failures by $1.09\times$, and improves GS load balancing compared with state-of-the-art GS selection and routing algorithms.

Problem

• Earth observation
• Ground station congestion
• Inter-satellite links
• Traffic contention
• Satellite mobility

Innovation

• satellite mobility
• inter-satellite links
• pickup-carry-offload
• orbit-as-node
• traffic diffusion