{
  "annotation_id": "197ffd8e-222d-4ab4-839f-a34bfba7346e",
  "date_created": "2026-02-17T05:53:23.790000Z",
  "date_modified": "2026-02-17T05:53:23.790000Z",
  "file_hash": "16821486a44f892b3fca244d3813c7f8bf651600a3a8c9eedccfc7be63e966d6",
  "private": false,
  "record": {
    "abstract": "Low-Earth orbit (LEO) mega-constellations are emerging as high-capacity backbones for next-generation Internet. Deployment of laser terminals enables high-bandwidth, low-latency inter-satellite links (ISLs); however, their limited number, slow acquisition, and instability make forming a stable satellite topology difficult. Existing patterns like +Grid and Motif ignore regional traffic, ground station placement, and constellation geometry. Given sparse population distribution on Earth and the isolation of rural areas, traffic patterns are inherently non-uniform, providing an opportunity to orient inter-satellite links (ISLs) according to these traffic patterns. In this paper, we propose Starfield, a novel demand-aware satellite topology design heuristic algorithm supported by mathematical analysis. We first formulate a vector field on the constellation\u0027s shell according to traffic flows and define a corresponding Riemannian metric on the spherical manifold of the shell. The metric, combined with the spatial geometry, is used to assign a distance to each potential ISL, which we then aggregate over all demand flows to generate a heuristic for each satellite\u0027s link selection. Inspired by +Grid, each satellite selects the link with the minimum Riemannian heuristic along with its corresponding angular links. To evaluate Starfield, we developed a custom, link-aware, and link-configurable packet-level simulator, comparing it against +Grid and Random topologies. For the Phase 1 Starlink, simulation results show up to a 30% reduction in hop count and a 15% improvement in stretch factor across multiple traffic distributions. Moreover, static Starfield, an inter-orbital link matching modification of Starfield, achieves a 20% improvement in stretch factor under realistic traffic patterns compared to +Grid. Experiments further demonstrate Starfield\u0027s robustness under traffic demand perturbations.",
    "arxiv_id": "2601.10083",
    "authors": [
      "Shayan Hamidi Dehshali",
      "Tzu-Hsuan Liao",
      "Shaileshh Bojja Venkatakrishnan"
    ],
    "categories": [
      "cs.NI",
      "cs.ET",
      "math.DG"
    ],
    "license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
    "title": "Starfield: Demand-Aware Satellite Topology Design for Low-Earth Orbit Mega Constellations",
    "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.10083",
    "version": "v1"
  },
  "schema_id": "dorsal/arxiv",
  "source": {
    "execution_id": "49ecdcdd-bb2f-4da1-a2b9-40a44b77fe36",
    "id": "arXiv Dataset",
    "type": "Model",
    "variant": "snapshot-2026-01-17",
    "version": "0.1.0"
  },
  "user_id": 1000002
}