Download Traffic Scheduling for CubeSats Swarms with Inter-Satellite Links

Abstract

This paper considers maximizing the total downloaded data from a CubeSats swarm to ground stations. The key challenges include intermittent contact time and duration with ground stations, and limited resources. It aims to study the benefits of transferring data over Inter-Satellite Links (ISLs). It presents four satellite-to-ground (s-g) pairing rules; namely, Pair Transmit Most Data (PTMD), Random Pair (RP), Shortest Contact Duration (SCD), and Round Robin (RR). The results indicate that ISLs help CubeSats ensure they have more data to download to ground stations. Moreover, the use of ISLs simplifies s - $g$ pairing because any of the aforementioned rules can be used to yield similar amounts of downloaded data.