OrbitTransit: Traffic Delivery and Diffusion for Earth Observation via Satellite Mobility

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhao, Haoyuan, Chen, Long, Chou, Yi Ching, Fang, Hao, Liu, Jiangchuan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Zhao, Haoyuan
Chen, Long
Chou, Yi Ching
Fang, Hao
Liu, Jiangchuan
author_facet Zhao, Haoyuan
Chen, Long
Chou, Yi Ching
Fang, Hao
Liu, Jiangchuan
contents The emerging demand for Earth observation (EO) to address environmental challenges has driven unprecedented growth in its primary carrier, Low Earth Orbit satellites, in recent years. Ground stations (GSs), the egress points of these networks, are congested due to the massive volume of EO traffic, and their deployment is constrained by geographic, political, and budgetary factors. Although inter-satellite links (ISLs) can partially relieve this congestion by forwarding traffic to alternative GSs, existing ISL-based approaches can hardly address traffic contention caused by biased GS distribution and may also raise sustainability concerns due to prolonged ISL paths. In this paper, we propose OrbitTransit, a pickup-carry-offload (PCO) approach that leverages satellite mobility for data \textit{delivery} and integrates ISLs for traffic \textit{diffusion} to alleviate the resource contention inherent in PCO delivery. The proposed orbit-as-node framework and contention-avoidant delivery jointly determine the optimal hybrid PCO-ISL path, minimizing energy consumption and balancing GS traffic. Extensive experiments show that OrbitTransit reduces battery consumption by $47.16\%$, decreases task failures by $1.09\times$, and improves GS load balancing compared with state-of-the-art GS selection and routing algorithms.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_04368
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle OrbitTransit: Traffic Delivery and Diffusion for Earth Observation via Satellite Mobility
Zhao, Haoyuan
Chen, Long
Chou, Yi Ching
Fang, Hao
Liu, Jiangchuan
Networking and Internet Architecture
The emerging demand for Earth observation (EO) to address environmental challenges has driven unprecedented growth in its primary carrier, Low Earth Orbit satellites, in recent years. Ground stations (GSs), the egress points of these networks, are congested due to the massive volume of EO traffic, and their deployment is constrained by geographic, political, and budgetary factors. Although inter-satellite links (ISLs) can partially relieve this congestion by forwarding traffic to alternative GSs, existing ISL-based approaches can hardly address traffic contention caused by biased GS distribution and may also raise sustainability concerns due to prolonged ISL paths. In this paper, we propose OrbitTransit, a pickup-carry-offload (PCO) approach that leverages satellite mobility for data \textit{delivery} and integrates ISLs for traffic \textit{diffusion} to alleviate the resource contention inherent in PCO delivery. The proposed orbit-as-node framework and contention-avoidant delivery jointly determine the optimal hybrid PCO-ISL path, minimizing energy consumption and balancing GS traffic. Extensive experiments show that OrbitTransit reduces battery consumption by $47.16\%$, decreases task failures by $1.09\times$, and improves GS load balancing compared with state-of-the-art GS selection and routing algorithms.
title OrbitTransit: Traffic Delivery and Diffusion for Earth Observation via Satellite Mobility
topic Networking and Internet Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.04368