A General Formal Method for Manifold Coverage Analysis of Satellite Constellations
Xiaoyu Chen, Zhiming Song, Guangming Dai, Maocai Wang, Emiliano Ortore, Christian Circi
Abstract
This article studies the problem of analyzing the coverage capacity of satellite constellations with respect to ground regions. The coverage characteristics and formulations are first investigated, and a corresponding symbol system is established. On this basis, the coverage state function and the corresponding extension and intermediate modes for basic coverage analysis problems are defined. By introducing the parameter wildcard characters, the properties of three basic spatial and temporal factors are described. An integrated coverage theory system is constructed accordingly to formalize the general coverage analysis problems in a uniform way, which is versatile and works on representing any type of coverage analysis problems. Additionally, in accordance with the properties of the coverage theory, a boundary function is proposed. The corresponding algorithm framework is also constructed for the calculation of complicated practical coverage analysis problems. Experiments simulating different types of coverage analysis problems are carried out, and results reveal the correctness and the effectiveness of the proposed coverage theory system and algorithm framework.