Collaborative Autonomy and Resilience of Distributed Satellites (CARDS)

Collaborative Autonomy, and Resiliency for Distributed Satellites (CARDS) focuses on providing enhanced Space Domain Awareness (SDA) via establishing an advanced framework to optimize the collaboration of heterogeneous satellites whether in a centralized or decentralized network. The CARDS framework consists of three components (Suitability, Multi-Int Fusion and an Optimization Engine) to be used in either a synchronous or asynchronous state depending on the state of the mission. Suitability uses the Analytic Hierarchy Process to determine the goodness of a collection happening on a task.  This is done by evaluating criteria (i.e. spatial coverage of the task, quality of the collection, impact of weather) with the Analytic Hierarchy Process to give weighted goodness of a sensor collecting on a task.  This goodness is used by the Optimization engine to make cuts in the solution space to converge on a solution quicker.  The Multi-Int Fusion is represented by a set of Information Gain Heatmaps.  Each heatmap will represent the gain associated with different intelligence types and probabilistic likelihoods of gains when decentralization occurs.  The Information Gain Heatmap is created using a method called QuadTrees, which allows for varying sized cells.  Smaller cells are created in areas that require more fidelity and larger cells in areas with less fidelity.  This allows for CARDS to efficiently discretize an area while still maintaining high fidelity.  The optimization engine creates a collection plan for the assets in a centralized or decentralized state depending on the mission state.