A Scalable Architecture for Future Regenerative Satellite Payloads

TL;DR

This paper proposes a scalable, flexible satellite payload architecture using interconnected modem banks, optimized traffic management, and simulation results showing improved delay and packet loss performance under high traffic conditions.

Contribution

Introduces a novel regenerative satellite payload architecture with interconnected modem banks and an optimization framework for traffic management, enhancing scalability and flexibility.

Findings

Lower delays achieved under high traffic loads

Reduced packet loss with smaller buffer sizes

Architecture maintains performance with increasing data demands

Abstract

This paper addresses the limitations of current satellite payload architectures, which are predominantly hardware-driven and lack the flexibility to adapt to increasing data demands and uneven traffic. To overcome these challenges, we present a novel architecture for future regenerative and programmable satellite payloads and utilize interconnected modem banks to promote higher scalability and flexibility. We formulate an optimization problem to efficiently manage traffic among these modem banks and balance the load. Additionally, we provide comparative numerical simulation results, considering end-to-end delay and packet loss analysis. The results illustrate that our proposed architecture maintains lower delays and packet loss even with higher traffic demands and smaller buffer sizes.