Towards energy-prioritized orbital computing service

Abstract

In-orbit computing has emerged as a transformative solution to address the bandwidth bottleneck inherent in traditional satellite services. To meet the real-time demands of satellite computing and make efficient use of the scarce in-orbit energy, the next generation of in-orbit computing should operate in a pulse-like manner, performing rapid computations only after acquiring target data and remaining in a low-power sleep mode for the majority of the time. This novel paradigm, referred to as orbital pulse computing (OPC), facilitates fast data processing, significantly reducing service latency while avoiding unnecessary energy consumption, thereby enhancing service throughput. We propose EPOCH, an energy-prioritized architecture towards efficient OPC service. It aims to emphasize the importance of energy and task awareness in OPC scheduling and processing. To achieve this, EPOCH implements its design across three levels. At the constellation level, EPOCH balances the task distributions based on the awareness of satellites. At the satellite level, EPOCH optimizes pulse-aware scheduling by considering energy and pulse. At the task level, EPOCH provides a power-aware dynamic approach for the task queue. Extensive experiments show that EPOCH could achieve a 66.5% improvement in request throughput and a 24.3% reduction in latency compared with state-of-the-art orbit service designs.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

computer architecture / emerging application domains / power management / scheduling and resource management

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