A Satellite Connections Approach Based on Spatial Footprints

All LEO and MEO systems are based on structured topologies, where all satellites know the existence and the position of their neighbor satellites. It makes a satellite network difficult to scale and it needs many administration cost. This article describes an inter-satellite connection approach, which allows dynamic topologies with very low administration maintenance. The connections topology between satellites is created as a function of their available processing capacity and their available number of connections. It is scalable and fault-tolerant The protocol and its management are described. Finally, simulations for Iridium, Globalstar, Teledesic and ICO systems are shown.