A machine-learning enabled digital-twin framework for the rapid design of satellite constellations for “Planet-X”

Abstract

Worldwide communication bandwidth growth has largely been driven by (1) multimedia demands, (2) multicommunication-point demands and (3) multicommunication-rate demands, and has increased dramatically over the last two decades due to e-commerce, internet communication and the explosion of cell-phone use, in particular for in-flight services, all of which necessitate broadband use and low latency. In order to accommodate this huge surge in demand, next generation “mega-constellations” of satellites are being proposed combining a mix of heterogeneous unit types in LEO, MEO and GEO orbital shells, in order to provide continuous lower-latency and high-bandwidth service which exploits a wide-range of frequencies for fast internet connections (broadband, which is not possible with single satellite-type orbital shell systems). Accordingly, in this work, we develop a computationally-efficient digital-twin framework for a constellation of satellites around an arbitrary planet (“Planet-X”). The rapid speed of these simulations enables the ability to explore satellite infrastructure parameter combinations, represented by a multicomponent satellite constellation design vector \(\varvec{\Lambda }{\mathop {=}\limits ^\textrm{def}}\) (number of satellites, satellite orbital radii, satellite orbital speeds, satellite types), that can deliver desired communication signal or camera coverage on “Planet-X", while simultaneously incorporating satellite infrastructural resource constraints. In order to cast the objective mathematically, we set up the system design as an inverse problem to minimize a cost function via a Genetic Machine Learning Algorithm (G-MLA), which is well-suited for nonconvex optimization. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the framework.