Efficient and Responsive Task Allocation in Distributed Satellite Systems: The Role of Central Nodes

Efficient and responsive satellite operation planning is essential for monitoring short-lived transient events on Earth, such as floods, wildfires, and thunderstorms, as well as for observing objects in space, including satellites, debris, and natural bodies. Most operations rely on centralized planning, which introduces dependency on a central node and causes delays, particularly as the number of satellites increases. These operations require responsive data collection, onboard processing, and seamless communication among satellites. To address this, we propose a method for decentralized scheduling of operations that minimizes inter-satellite data transmission, onboard computational requirements, and power consumption. This paper evaluates the performance of the proposed decentralized task allocation method as a planning strategy for space object detection in Distributed Satellite Systems. We focus on analyzing the performance of the task allocation mechanism in terms of time for propagating the task and capability of performing the observation for Distributed Satellite Systems with different numbers of observers and numbers of central nodes. Our findings highlight the importance of balancing the flexibility and scalability of decentralized networks with the limited complexity of centralized networks to optimize operational efficiency.     «

Efficient and responsive satellite operation planning is essential for monitoring short-lived transient events on Earth, such as floods, wildfires, and thunderstorms, as well as for observing objects in space, including satellites, debris, and natural bodies. Most operations rely on centralized planning, which introduces dependency on a central node and causes delays, particularly as the number of satellites increases. These operations require responsive data collection, onboard processing, and...     »