用可微方法自动设计卫星星座,更快更准找到最优轨道布局。
Differentiable Satellite Constellation Configuration via Relaxed Coverage and Revisit Objectives

- 通过连续松弛技术让覆盖与重访指标可微,实现梯度优化。
- 仅需约750次评估即可达到与经典算法相当的重访性能。
- 适合需要快速迭代设计卫星系统的科研与工程团队。
卫星星座设计需优化多颗卫星的轨道参数以最大化任务相关指标。对于多数任务,理想目标是最大化地面目标覆盖范围并最小化重访间隙。现有方法要么局限于对称参数族(如Walker星座),要么依赖计算量大、迭代次数多的元启发式算法。由于覆盖与重访指标涉及二值可见性判断和离散最大操作,梯度优化长期被视为不可行。本文提出四种连续松弛:软Sigmoid可见性、噪声-或多星聚合、漏斗积分器重访间隙追踪、LogSumExp软最大值,结合∂SGP4可微轨道传播器,构建从轨道要素到任务目标的完整可微流程。实验表明,该方法能从非规则初始状态恢复出Walker-Delta构型,并仅凭梯度发现椭圆莫尼雅类轨道,其远地点停留于高纬度区域。相比模拟退火(SA)、遗传算法(GA)和差分进化(DE),本方法在约750次评估内即达到等效Walker几何,而三者即使使用四倍评估预算仍表现更差。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Satellite constellation design requires optimizing orbital parameters across multiple satellites to maximize mission specific metrics. For many types of mission, it is desirable to maximize coverage and minimize revisit gaps over ground targets. Existing approaches to constellation design either restrict the design space to symmetric parametric families such as Walker constellations, or rely on metaheuristic methods that require significant compute and many iterations. Gradient-based optimization has been considered intractable due to the non-differentiability of coverage and revisit metrics, which involve binary visibility indicators and discrete max operations. We introduce four continuous relaxations: soft sigmoid visibility, noisy-OR multi-satellite aggregation, leaky integrator revisit gap tracking, and LogSumExp soft-maximum, which when composed with the $\partial$SGP4 differentiable orbit propagator, yield a fully differentiable pipeline from orbital elements to mission-level objectives. We show that this scheme can recover Walker-Delta geometry from irregular initializations, and discovers elliptical Molniya-like orbits with apogee dwell over extreme latitudes from only gradients. Compared to simulated annealing (SA), genetic algorithm (GA), and differential evolution (DE) baselines, our gradient-based method recovers Walker-equivalent geometry within ${\sim}750$ evaluations, whereas the three black-box baselines plateau at with significantly worse revisit even with roughly four times the evaluation budget.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。