Air defense enhancements under consideration due to increasing air traffic and the cruise missile threat will result in the introduction of a number of low earth orbit satellite constellations that will need to communicate data quickly and reliably. Current air defense communications makes use of commercial satellites in geostationary orbit. The Seek Igloo radars in Alaska communicate to Elmendorf AFB via the Aurora Satellite, as part of the AUTOVON system. Satellite communications are also planned for the North Warning System (NWS) as a primary communications medium. The upcoming satellite constellations, deployed in low earth orbit, will require new networking concepts that provide robust operation and connectivity. This paper addresses the communication network issues of low earth orbit constellations and provides a quantitative measure of the time varying connectivity of space networks.

Date Published: 2 June 1989
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 1059, Space Sensing, Communications, and Networking, (2 June 1989); doi: 10.1117/12.951694

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1059:
Space Sensing, Communications, and Networking
Monte Ross; Richard J. Temkin, Editor(s)