Polygon Based Topology Formation and Information Gathering in Satellite Based Wireless Sensor Network

• Published in: Wireless personal communications 2020-11, Vol.115 (1), p.203-237
• Main Authors: Kuruba, Padmaja, Dushyantha, N. D.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Apexes; Clusters; Communications Engineering; Computer architecture; Computer Communication Networks; Computer networks; Earth observations (from space); Engineering; Field of view; Fullerenes; Graphs; Ground stations; Low cost; Low earth orbits; Network reliability; Network topologies; Networks; Nodes; Polygons; Polyhedra; Reconfiguration; Satellite networks; Satellites; Sensors; Signal,Image and Speech Processing; Small satellites; Spacecraft recovery; Tiling; Virtual networks; Wireless networks; Wireless sensor networks
• ISSN: 0929-6212; 1572-834X
• DOI: 10.1007/s11277-020-07568-9

The satellite network is one of the major source of information and these days small satellites are gaining lot of focus. The group of small satellites form a distributed network that work collaboratively to accomplish the mission task. These networks are very similar to the terrestrial wireless sensor network in terms of restricted resources and constrained capabilities. Sometimes, network of small satellites is also called as space based wireless sensor network (SBWSN). In any distributed network, topology formation and its control plays a significant role. This is true for SBWSN also. The topology in SBWSN decides the area of coverage (field of view), time of coverage, data gathered and data transmitted to ground station. The proposed topology is a distributed network of small satellites formed by trivalent, toroidal and spherical polyhedron graph forming a fullerene, which is called as polygon based network topology (PBNT). It comprises of both pentagonal ( F p ) and hexagonal ( F h ) faces with K regular graphs such that K  ≥ 3 with genus equal to 1. It also satisfies Eulers formula with n vertices. The fullerene comprises of simple rings and each of this ring forms the cluster. Each cluster is further represented as a triangular grid, that is linearly convex or non-linear, with K-connected graph along with Hamiltonian extendible cycle. The nodes/satellites on the triangular grid represent sensing nodes (low capability nodes/satellites), while the vertices of the ring are sink nodes (higher capability nodes/satellites). In this work, the topology is formed by small satellites (pico or nano satellites). In the proposed topology formation, the network is considered as virtual network with logical neighbours forming the cluster. Each node in the cluster covers a particular swath for a particular time interval based on the mission payload and on the p3 tiling. In the simulation, we consider n small satellites being placed in low earth orbit (LEO), (where n ranges from 3 to 150). The performance enhancements are seen during simulation in the following parameters, (1) Coverage Area : The coverage area increases as multiple satellites have different field of view at different times. (2) Reduces Gaps :The proposed distributed network also minimises uncovered areas as multiple satellites cover the target location at different time stamp which is not possible by a single large satellite. (3) Increase in Data Throughput : Each satellite in the network transmits