Energy-Efficient Network Transmission between Satellite Swarms and Earth Stations Based on Lyapunov Optimization Techniques

The recent advent of satellite swarm technologies has enabled space exploration with a massive number of picoclass, low-power, and low-weight spacecraft. However, developing swarm-based satellite systems, from conceptualization to validation, is a complex multidisciplinary activity. One of the primary challenges is how to achieve energy-efficient data transmission between the satellite swarm and terrestrial terminal stations. Employing Lyapunov optimization techniques, we present an online control algorithm to optimally dispatch traffic load among different satellite-ground links for minimizing overall energy consumption over time. Our algorithm is able to independently and simultaneously make control decisions on traffic dispatching over intersatellite-links and up-down-links so as to offer provable energy and delay guarantees, without requiring any statistical information of traffic arrivals and link condition. Rigorous analysis and extensive simulations have demonstrated the performance and robustness of the proposed new algorithm.