A Design-Oriented Characterization Framework for Decentralized, Distributed, Autonomous Systems: The Nano-Satellite Swarm Case

Abstract

The design of autonomous operational schemes for distributed, decentralized systems is expected to bring multiple qualities to systems of this kind. One of their instances are Earth-observing swarms of nano-satellites, in which their collective function targets global performance figures. The design of autonomous operations can be modelled as a collective scheduling problem subject to resource constraints. There are many system-wide qualities of interest, such as resiliency, adaptability, responsiveness, among others, that need specific frameworks to characterize the proposed solutions. This paper presents one such design-oriented tool that can evaluate these autonomous organization schemes-potentially for large-scale and highly heterogeneous scenarios with dynamic contexts and multiple time-scales-and illustrates its usage in the evaluation of an autonomous nano-satellite swarm that collectively optimizes revisit times.