Journal of Systems Engineering and Electronics ›› 2024, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (4): 976-986.doi: 10.23919/JSEE.2024.000089

• SYSTEMS ENGINEERING • Previous Articles    

Survivability model of LEO satellite constellation based on GERT with limited backup resources

Yuanyuan NIE1,*(), Zhigeng FANG1(), Sifeng LIU1(), Su GAO2()   

  1. 1 College of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 211106, China
    2 Institute of Telecommunication Satellite, China Academy of Space Technology, Beijing 100094, China
  • Received:2022-01-13 Online:2024-08-18 Published:2024-08-06
  • Contact: Yuanyuan NIE E-mail:yynnuaa@163.com;zhigengfang@163.com;sfliu@nuaa.edu.cn;su_gao06@163.com
  • About author:
    NIE Yuanyuan was born in 1989. She received her Ph.D. degree from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China, in 2023. She is currently an engineer at the China Astronautics standards Institute. Her research interests include the quality and reliability management of aerospace. E-mail: yynnuaa@163.com

    FANG Zhigeng was born in 1962. He received his Ph.D. degree from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China, in 2007. He is currently a professor with the College of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China. His research interests include complex equipment development management, quality and reliability management, grey information game, and graphical evaluation and review technique. E-mail: zhigengfang@163.com

    LIU Sifeng was born in 1955. He received his B.A. degree in mathematics from Henan University, Henan, China in 1981, M.A. degree in economics from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China in 1986 and Ph.D. degree in systems engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China in 1998. His research interest is gray theory. E-mail: sfliu@nuaa.edu.cn

    GAO Su was born in 1983. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in telecommunication engineering from Imperial College London, UK. He is currently a senior research engineer at the Institute of Telecommunication Satellite, China Academy of Space Technology. His research interests include satellite communication and system architecting. E-mail: su_gao06@163.com
  • Supported by:
    This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72271124;52232014;72071111;71801127;71671091).

Abstract:

Survivability is used to evaluate the ability of the satellite to complete the mission after failure, while the duration of maintaining performance is often ignored. An effective backup strategy can restore the constellation performance timely, and maintain good network communication performance in case of satellite failure. From the perspective of network utility, the low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation survivable graphical evaluation and review technology (GERT) network with backup satellites is constructed. A network utility transfer function algorithm based on moment generating function and Mason formula is proposed, the network survivability evaluation models of on-orbit backup strategy and ground backup strategy are established. The survivable GERT model can deduce the expected maintenance time of LEO satellite constellation under different fault states and the network utility generated during the state maintenance period. The case analysis shows that the proposed survivable GERT model can consider the satellite failure rate, backup satellite replacement rate, maneuver control replacement ability and life requirement, and effectively determine the optimal survivable backup strategy for LEO satellite constellation with limited resources according to the expected network utility.

Key words: survivability, low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation, graphical evaluation and review technology (GERT), backup strategy