Proliferated Low Earth Orbit (pLEO) Satellite Constellation Handover Cost Analysis

Abstract

In any mobile network, handovers between routing nodes generally cause a reduction in available resources for users. This is very true of proliferated Low Earth orbit (pLEO) satellite constellation networks in which both the satellite and the user are mobile with respect to each other. As satellites travel in their obits, they move into and out of ground users’ views every few minutes [4], and mobile users can move into and out of satellite spot beams frequently as well. When existing communication between a user and its serving satellites (uplink and downlink) terminate, user data must be relayed to the next serving satellite, possibly incurring additional data transmissions and overhead in the form of network management and control actions for acquisition in the network. This issue is becoming more relevant as commercial companies building their own satellite networks must figure out an efficient handover strategy to reduce unnecessary data transmissions and handover overhead. In this thesis, I estimate the satellite handover cost by quantifying the number of transmission hops required to relay existing queued data to/from the next serving satellite. The handover cost of a satellite network will depend on factors such as the network topology and the handover algorithm itself. I will quantify the impact of the aforementioned factors on the satellite network handover cost. A lower handover cost generally implies that the overall monetary cost (capital expenditure and operational expenditure) of a network to the provider (and also the user) is lower as well.