Framework Development for Efficient Mission-Oriented Satellite System-Level Design

The space mission analysis and design process defines a space system at the system level to accomplish space mission objectives. Although the traditional process is well established and comprehensive through several years of experience, we propose a novel design process framework in this paper to aid the traditional process focusing on the following areas of improvement: (1) clarification of the direct connection between mission objectives and final system-level baseline design and requirements, (2) development of a comprehensive quantitative judgment criterion to evaluate various design alternatives, (3) derivation of system drivers and critical requirements after obtaining sufficient design knowledge based on the analysis of big data obtained from exploration of entire design space using an integrated design environment, and (4) system optimization even at the system level with a holistic perspective to guarantee that the baseline design meets the mission objectives. Examples of design steps in the proposed framework are characterizing stakeholder needs and engineering characteristics, building an integrated design environment, exploring and analyzing design space, optimizing system-level design, and elaborating mission utility to ensure an efficient mission-oriented design approach. The proposed framework is implemented in an example space mission involving quantum cryptographic communication. Accordingly, we demonstrate that the proposed framework provides an efficient mission-oriented satellite system-level baseline design.