Satellite Diversity to Mitigate Jamming in LEO Satellite Mega-Constellations

With current large-scale deployments of low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites, the demand for data services provided by these satellite systems is expected to increase rapidly in the near future. To provide high-quality, high-rate data services it is essential to incorporate resiliency features, such as mitigation against potential jamming threats, to these systems. Low-orbit satellites are especially vulnerable to jamming attacks and could result in significant performance degradations even from low-power jammers. The availability of a large number of satellites in these mega-constellations can be exploited to realize satellite diversity. In this paper the feasibility of using satellite diversity to overcome jamming is investigated and the performance realized from such a diversity technique is evaluated. For a suitably selected set of diversity satellites, it is shown that a single jammer will not have a significant impact on more than a single satellite, and that the effects of this jammer can be completely mitigated by a 3-satellite diversity system.