Resilience Through Escalation: A Graph-Based PACE Architecture for Satellite Threat Response

TL;DR

This paper proposes a graph-based PACE architecture for satellite systems, enhancing resilience against cyber and electromagnetic threats through layered models and adaptive fallback strategies.

Contribution

It adapts the PACE framework to satellite systems using a layered state-transition model and introduces a dynamic resilience index for improved threat response.

Findings

Lightweight fallback mechanisms significantly improve survivability.

Adaptive PACE variants outperform static approaches in diverse scenarios.

Resilience index effectively quantifies system adaptability.

Abstract

Modern satellite systems face increasing operational risks from jamming, cyberattacks, and electromagnetic disruptions in contested space environments. Traditional redundancy strategies often fall short against such dynamic and multi-vector threats. This paper introduces a resilience-by-design framework grounded in the PACE methodology, which stands for Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency, originally developed for tactical communications in military operations. It adapts this framework to satellite systems through a layered state-transition model informed by threat scoring frameworks such as CVSS, DREAD, and NASA's risk matrix. We define a dynamic resilience index to quantify system adaptability and implement three PACE variants including static, adaptive, and epsilon-greedy reward-optimized to evaluate resilience under diverse disruption scenarios. Results show that lightweight, decision-aware fallback mechanisms can substantially improve survivability and operational continuity for next-generation space assets.