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

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.