Parametric Study for Relay Satellite Constellation Design in MEO

In recent years, the research proposals for using Relay Satellite Constellations (RSCs) in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) have gained great attention. These constellations facilitate communication between the relay and Earth observation (EO) satellites via inter-satellite links (ISLs) to control their payloads and achieve fast data delivery. Walker-Delta (WD) satellite constellation configurations were introduced in the literature using different numbers of planes and the number of satellites per plane. However, only single instances with specific orbital parameters have been introduced. Their coverage performances have not been discussed for a range of possible design parameters. No coverage performance between the RSC & ground station (GS) or between the RSC & realistic EO satellites has been investigated. Furthermore, The WD 4/2/1 constellation configuration is noteworthy as it can establish continuous ISLs between relays at particular orbital altitudes and inclinations, akin to the WD 3/3/0 constellation, which is planned for use by the inaugural commercial RSC in MEO. In this paper, we demonstrate the coverage performance advantages of WD 4/2/1 over WD 3/3/0 for a range of orbital altitudes and inclinations. Using the interface between MATLAB and Systems Tool Kit (STK) software, we developed a scenario to perform a parametric study to generate the related performance curves, which convincingly demonstrate the performance advantages of WD 4/2/1 over 3/3/0 as RSCs using a single GS.