Multi-Satellite Collaboration for Integrated Satellite Remote Sensing, Communications and Computing Networks: Usage Scenarios and Challenges

Abstract

With the booming demands for real-time integrated space information services and the advanced satellite direct-to-X technology, it is a promising future to integrate satellite remote sensing, communications and computing in the form of integrated satellite networks (ISN), which directly provide space information services for users even without terrestrial networks. In this article, we firstly present typical usage scenarios and discuss the requirements for ISN. Subsequently, we present ISN architecture by considering heterogeneous satellites, homogeneous integrated satellites and their hybrid deployments. Furthermore, we study the key parts of designing ISN, including integrated satellite sensing and communications, and multi-satellite collaborative computing. To reduce computing delay, we propose a multi-satellite and satellite-terrestrial collaborative computing scheme together with partial offloading, which fully utilizes the computing capabilities of satellite edge computing, terrestrial cloud computing and user computing. Request and push modes are studied for ISN's satellite remote sensing services, where the former satisfies the personalized user service requests, while the latter actively distributes public information to users for such scenarios as public safety services. Finally, we highlight some technical challenges and future research directions.