A Survey on Satellite Computing: Connecting the Dots Between Networks and Applications

Over the past decade, there has been a significant and rapid progression in satellite technology, mostly motivated by a wide deployment of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) mega-constellations and, more recently, emerging technologies like Inter-Satellite (Laser) Links (ISL) and multi-orbital constellations approaching maturity. This has rekindled interest towards the exploitation of satellite systems for a variety of tasks, including their use as computational servers similar to traditional Edge and Cloud infrastructures. Such paradigm, known as Satellite Computing, can serve any area on Earth in a holistic manner, enhancing applications anywhere and anytime in several distinct domains (e.g., environmental monitoring, emergency response and intelligent transportation). Despite being a highly active research area, Satellite Computing is still in early stages and, therefore, most research works are insular and target specific aspects and use cases. Moreover, the concept of Satellite Computing has not been standardized yet, thus its role in future network systems (e.g., beyond 5G/6G) remains unclear. This work aims to fill these gaps by providing a comprehensive survey of the state of the art. First, it discusses the network-and computing-related aspects that impact the realization of Satellite Computing in future systems. And second, it overviews specific use cases and applications enabled by Satellite Computing. Based on this two-fold analysis, a taxonomy of applications is derived from each application’s requirements and key networking design choices. Finally, it provides an overview from an industrial perspective, while identifying open challenges in the Satellite Computing area in order to boost and steer possible pathways for future research.