An Efficient Two-stage Networking Topology Design for Mega-constellation of Low Earth Orbit Satellites

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites play a crucial role in providing high-speed internet to remote areas and ensuring network resilience during outages. The design of efficient satellite constellations requires optimizing network topology, which is a complex task due to the large solution space and the need for fault tolerance. This paper presents the AlphaSat algorithm, a two-phase approach to improve latency and network robustness in LEO constellations. In the initialization phase, Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) is used to generate an initial topology by selecting links from a vast search space. In the refinement phase, an edge-switching method is applied to enhance network resilience and performance. AlphaSat is evaluated on OneWeb, Starlink, and Telesat mega-constellations, demonstrating superior performance over existing algorithms. The results show significant reductions in latency ranging from 4.7% to 44.5% and improvements in network robustness, increasing by 3.3% to 28.3%. Furthermore, AlphaSat effectively balances network load and optimizes power consumption, offering a promising solution for efficient and resilient LEO satellite network design.