Enabling green networking with a power down approach in LEO satellite constellations

Abstract

According to several studies, for batteries of the type that powered by Iridium NEXT satellites, a 15% reduction in depth of discharge (DoD) the battery lifetime almost doubles. Given the satellites in LEO constellations can spend 30% of their time under the earth's umbra, time during which they are powered by batteries. Also, due to several geographical and economic flourish constraints, some Inter-Satellite links (ISLs) are expected to be loaded with data packets while others remain unused. Most research on satellite power management are at component level or link level, treating satellites as isolated devices. A complementary approach is to facilitate power management at constellation level by routing traffic through different paths to adjust the workload on individual links. Since these networks are typically over-provisioned, selectively shutting down satellite links during periods of low demand seems like a good way to reduce energy consumption. While still guaranteeing full connectivity and maximum link utilization constraints. Since identifying the optimal set of links to shut down is an NP-complete problem that can be solved only for trivial cases, therefore, we propose efficient heuristics that can be used for LEO satellite network topology.