Inter-Plane Inter-Satellite Connectivity in Dense LEO Constellations
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With numerous ongoing deployments owned by private companies and startups, dense satellite constellations, with hundreds or even thousands of small satellites deployed in low Earth orbit (LEO), will play a major role in the near future of wireless communications. In addition, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has ongoing efforts to integrate satellites into 5G and beyond-5G networks. Nevertheless, there are numerous challenges that must be overcome to fully exploit the connectivity capabilities of satellite constellations. These challenges are mainly a consequence of the low capabilities of individual small satellites, along with their high orbital speeds and small coverage due to the low altitude of deployment. In particular, inter-plane inter-satellite links (ISLs), which connect satellites from different orbital planes, are greatly dynamic and may be considerably affected by the Doppler shift. In this paper, we present a framework and the corresponding algorithms for the dynamic establishment of the inter-plane ISLs in LEO constellations. Our results show that the proposed algorithms increase 1) the sum of rates in the constellation by up to 81 state-of-the-art benchmark schemes and 2) the resource efficiency by up to 700 when compared to random resource allocation.
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