With plans for advancing into the rest of the solar system in the coming decades, an understanding of how interlinked satellite systems behave as a network will be essential. The relatively recent development of optics as a method of space communication means that inter-satellite networks are more feasible than ever. That said, there are currently no analyses which take into account a planet-wide, largely uncoordinated, optically linked satellite network. To provide a look at the properties of such a network, movement and connections of Earth's currently active satellites were simulated based on real-world data, and their networks modeled via graphs. Ultimately, it was found that many properties of such a network are periodic, fluctuating in sync with the orbital time of low-earth orbit satellites. This, among other data, suggests that the peaks of these waves are caused by a meeting of satellites near the north and south poles.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:siu.edu/oai:opensiuc.lib.siu.edu:theses-3716 |
| Date | 01 May 2020 |
| Creators | Pennington, Nicholas |
| Publisher | OpenSIUC |
| Source Sets | Southern Illinois University Carbondale |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Theses |
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