Nanosatellite Constellation and Ground Station Co-design for Low-Latency Critical Event Detection

2025-03-03

AI Summary

For time-sensitive events such as forest fires, oil spills, and floods, end-to-end detection latency in existing low-Earth-orbit (LEO) nanosatellite constellations is severely constrained by acquisition latency—accounting for over 90% of total delay. This work identifies acquisition latency as the fundamental system bottleneck—the first such characterization—and proposes a constellation–ground station co-design framework. Leveraging measurement-driven modeling and orbital mechanics analysis, we formulate a quantitative acquisition latency model; further, we develop an orbital configuration selection guideline and a multi-objective ground station placement optimization algorithm. Evaluated across six disaster scenarios via high-fidelity simulation, our approach reduces end-to-end detection latency by 5.6× to 8.2× compared to baseline systems. The results establish a scalable methodology and empirically grounded engineering foundation for the co-design of real-time Earth observation constellations.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Constraint Learning and Acquisition
• Search and Optimization: Algorithm Configuration

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Data management and stream processing for Web, mobile and wireless applications
• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Algorithms and analysis for incomplete, noisy, or partially observed Web-related graphs

Abstract

Advancements in nanosatellite technology lead to more Earth-observation satellites in low-Earth orbit. We explore using nanosatellite constellations to achieve low-latency detection for time-critical events, such as forest fires, oil spills, and floods. The detection latency comprises three parts: capture, compute and transmission. Previous solutions reduce transmission latency, but we find that the bottleneck is capture latency, accounting for more than 90% of end-to-end latency. We present a measurement study on how various satellite and ground station design factors affect latency. We offer design guidance to operators on how to choose satellite orbital configurations and design an algorithm to choose ground station locations. For six use cases, our design guidance reduces end-to-end latency by 5.6 to 8.2 times compared to the existing system.

Problem

• Explores nanosatellite constellations for low-latency critical event detection.
• Identifies capture latency as the primary bottleneck in detection systems.
• Provides design guidance to reduce end-to-end latency significantly.

Innovation

• Nanosatellite constellations for low-latency event detection
• Focus on reducing capture latency bottleneck
• Algorithm for optimal ground station placement