Distributed Architecture

Definition

A Distributed Architecture is a collaborative observation network composed of multiple observation satellites that achieves high-coverage monitoring of the entire cislunar domain or specific targets through spatially distributed deployment. Compared with a monolithic architecture, a distributed architecture provides more comprehensive coverage, greater redundancy, and stronger survivability.

Application in Cislunar Space SSA

Cislunar space is vast in volume, making it difficult for a monolithic architecture to provide persistent coverage of key regions (such as cislunar transfer corridors and the vicinity of L1/L2). Klonowski (2025) systematically studied the design methodology for distributed cislunar space SSA architectures, including:

Architecture Design Objectives

Coverage Maximization: Maximize detection coverage of transfer trajectories and critical volumes
Cost Minimization: Minimize the number of observation satellites and deployment costs
Collaborative Optimization: Account for the operational requirements of cooperative agents using the architecture

Orbit Family Selection

Observation satellites in a distributed architecture are typically deployed in the following orbit families:

Distant Retrograde Orbit (DRO)
L1/L2 halo orbits
Resonant orbits (e.g., 2:1, 3:2 resonance)
Mixed orbit configurations

Coverage Performance Evaluation

Evaluation metrics include:

Volume coverage ratio
Trajectory coverage ratio
Resilience Map
Persistent Detection Corridor (PDC)

Comparison with Monolithic Architecture

Characteristic	Monolithic Architecture	Distributed Architecture
Coverage Scope	Limited	Full domain / critical areas
Redundancy	Low	High
Survivability	Poor	Good
Cost	Low	High
Scheduling Complexity	Low	High

Core Elements

Mathematical Description

A distributed architecture consists of $N$ observation satellites. Each satellite $i$ has state $\mathbf{x}_i(t)$ and detection region $\mathcal{D}_i(t)$ . The total architecture coverage is:

\mathcal{D}_{\text{total}}(t) = \bigcup_{i=1}^{N} \mathcal{D}_i(t)

Key Properties

The coverage performance of a distributed architecture grows approximately linearly with the number of satellites (with diminishing marginal returns)
Orbit configuration and initial phase selection significantly affect coverage performance
Collaborative scheduling can further improve coverage efficiency

Application Scenarios

Distributed architectures are suitable for cislunar space safety-critical missions such as high-value asset protection, crewed mission support, and deep space communication assurance.

References

Klonowski M, Holzinger M J, Owens-Fahrner N. Optimal Cislunar Architecture Design Using Monte Carlo Tree Search Methods[J]. The Journal of the Astronautical Sciences, 2023.
Klonowski M. Cislunar Space Situational Awareness Architecture Design and Analysis[D]. University of Colorado Boulder, 2025.