Decentralized Reactive Satellite Constellation Planning for Event Observation

Satellite observation planning is an active field of research that aims to improve the quantity and utility of observations by agile or taskable satellites. Most of the existing work focuses on observing static ground points with constant rewards, which is not sufficient to capture dynamic events on Earth’s surface. We introduce in this work a reactive planning method suitable for observation of time-varying events by a constellation of homogeneous or heterogeneous satellites, and compare it to a non-reactive planning algorithm. We perform this comparison on a generalized scenario with varying parameters such as event duration and number of satellites. We also examine several realistic event scenarios, including lightning storms, fires, and high-flow events in rivers. We show that reactive planning outperforms non-reactive planning in observing and re-observing events, and we show that the reactive planning has tunable hyperparameters that can be adjusted based on the satellite operator’s event observation preferences. A sensitivity analysis shows that reactive planning is most beneficial compared to non-reactive planning in terms of generating more re-observations of events when there are more planes of satellites and when event durations are longer. Ultimately, the proposed reactive planning strategies can greatly reduce our response time to – and increase our spatio-temporal sampling of – short-lived events and scientific processes.

卫星观测规划（Satellite observation planning）是当前的活跃研究领域，旨在提升敏捷卫星或可任务卫星的观测数量与观测效用。现有绝大多数研究聚焦于奖励恒定的静态地面点观测，这无法充分捕捉地球表面的动态事件。本研究提出一种适用于同构或异构卫星星座开展时变事件观测的反应式规划方法，并将其与非反应式规划算法进行对比。我们在涵盖事件持续时长、卫星数量等可变参数的广义场景中开展对比实验，同时测试了包括雷暴、森林火灾与河流高流量事件在内的多个真实事件场景。实验结果表明，在事件观测与复观测任务中，反应式规划的表现优于非反应式规划；且该反应式规划具备可调节的超参数（hyperparameters），可根据卫星运营商的事件观测偏好进行调整。敏感性分析显示，当卫星轨道面数量更多、事件持续时长更长时，相较于非反应式规划，反应式规划能生成更多的事件复观测结果，优势最为显著。最终，所提出的反应式规划策略可大幅缩短我们对短时突发事件与科学过程的响应时间，并提升对其的时空采样（spatio-temporal sampling）效率与覆盖范围。

搜集汇总

背景与挑战

背景概述

该数据集聚焦于卫星星座观测规划，针对时变事件（如闪电风暴、火灾和河流高流量事件）提出了一种反应式规划方法。该方法适用于同质或异质卫星，通过与非反应式规划算法比较，在事件持续时间和卫星数量等参数下进行评估，结果显示反应式规划在事件观测和重观测方面表现更优，并具有可调超参数以适应不同观测偏好。