A concept architecture model with autonomous coordination for flying formation

Flying formations are an attractive prospect for improved science return as they provide a natural capability for temporal, spatial and signal separation with further engineering and economic advantages. As satellite numbers increase, the traditional “remote-control” approach begins to break down. It is therefore essential to push control into space; to make spacecraft more autonomous. This article analyses some available typical autonomous coordination paradigms and then a hybrid autonomous coordination hierarchy for formations is presented, which is designed to minimize the traffic of intersatellite links and aid scalability to larger numbers (hundreds) of small satellites for tasks allocation.