Distributed Contact Plan Design for GNSSs

Next generation global navigation satellite systems (GNSSs) will embrace intersatellite links capability as an enabler of navigation and data transfer. However, platform restrictions will require of suitable contact plan design (CPD) schemes, which have been traditionally assumed centralized. After discussing the requirements of distributed CPD, we propose a first scheme in this class. Simulation results on the BeiDou GNSS prove that satisfactory metrics can be obtained enabling valuable and real autonomy for future GNSSs.