Collaborative Data Offloading for Earth Observation Satellite Networks

We study the collaborative data offloading problem for earth observation satellite networks (EOSNs) that allows light-loaded satellites to assist heavily-loaded ones to offload earth observation data. First, we propose a task flow graph (TFG) to depict the collaborative data offloading procedure. Based on the proposed TFG, we formulate the studied problem as integer linear programming (ILP) to maximize the weighted sum of successfully offloaded tasks. Then, we leverage the underlying structure of ILP to propose a fast yet efficient algorithm. Finally, our simulation results demonstrate that collaborative data offloading can significantly improve the performance of the EOSNs.