Progressive deployment of a LEO constellation providing support services to LEO client satellites: a trade-off analysis

This paper presents a framework intended to assist, during the preliminary phases of the design of a space system’s architecture, the decision-making process underlying the identification of an appropriate progressive deployment plan for a constellation of LEO satellites, intended to provide support in communication and on-board processing to other LEO client satellites. The study proposes a progressive deployment strategy in which the system capacity is increased gradually and design options are evaluated at each step of the deployment process. The proposed method considers different architectural options (such as the number of orbital planes and the number of satellites per plane) and makes use of a multi-objective optimization approach. A life-cycle simulation model has been specifically developed to provide a realistic assessment of system behaviour. Different market scenarios with different workload conditions have been considered in order to identify some optimal progressive deployment solutions for the proposed infrastructure. The study aims at proposing a method to assess the value of an added system flexibility: such a value can be obtained by comparing the life-cycle costs of flexibility-oriented designs obtained through the proposed approach with costs deriving from traditional design methods.