Waves Satellite Constellation Design and Analysis

Abstract

Satellites are excellent platforms for communications, sensing, imaging, and navigation, providing the “high ground” for large-area fields of view and low-loss free-space paths for inter-satellite links. As development and production costs decline, large constellations (upward of thousands of satellites) are planned for near-future launches by both private and public entities. Designing these constellations is challenging because of the large trade space that includes altitude, inclination, total number of satellites, distribution of satellites in planes, and phasing between satellite planes. In this article, we discuss a new constellation design (patent pending), which we call a Waves constellation, developed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) to provide optimal coverage in a given latitude band. Further, we discuss our work to speed up the analysis of satellite constellation coverage, which can be used with the Waves geometry or any arbitrary constellation geometry.