Reliable and Low-Overhead Clustering in LEO Small Satellite Networks

Low earth orbit (LEO) small satellites have attracted great interests in civilian and military applications due to their low cost and high service performance. However, the enormous scale and high dynamism of small satellites pose challenges to network flexibility and scalability. Therefore, the hierarchical satellite network structure is introduced as an effective approach to enhance the satellite network capabilities further. In this regard, small satellites’ clustering is of fundamental importance for designing such a hierarchical structure. Satellite clusters are always prone to instability due to unpredictable link failures and frequent topology changes. In this article, we study the small satellite clustering problem of jointly optimizing the cluster reliability and the network management overhead. A coalition game-theoretic framework is introduced to obtain low computational complexity by adopting the clustering-decision-making process in an automated and fully distributed fashion. A distributed coalition formation algorithm based on the optimization of reliability and management overhead is developed for the clustering problem. Finally, extensive simulations have been conducted, and the results show that our proposed clustering scheme is able to produce better results than the baseline schemes.