On the reliability, availability, and throughput of satellite swarms

Abstract

Based on the opportunities and gained reputation of individual nanosatellites, a larger number of identical nanosatellites may, in the future, build up a spacecraft swarm for applications, such as multipoint sensing, virtual instruments, or enhanced communication. However, the overall system characterization of such a spacecraft swarm as well as its comparison to classical monolithic space architectures has not yet been performed. To this end, we model, analyze, and compare the lifetime of nanosatellites and classical larger satellites using representative Markov models and Monte-Carlo analysis. We model, characterize, and analyze swarm-specific aspects, in particular, systemwide reliability, availability, and throughput. Finally, we critically examine design strategies for spacecraft swarms that suggest individual spacecraft to take over functionality from other swarm satellites with the goal to increase system-level performance.