Progressive Replacement Sequence Planning for Laser-Enhanced BeiDou Navigation Constellations

Abstract

The early satellites of the third-generation BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS-3) are approaching the end of their design lifetime, making progressive constellation replacement an inevitable engineering task. Meanwhile, laser inter-satellite links (LISLs) provide high-precision time transfer, sub-millimeter-level ranging, and high-rate data forwarding capabilities, offering a promising upgrade path for future BeiDou satellites. This paper investigates the replacement-sequence planning problem for progressively replacing legacy microwave satellites with laser-enabled satellites from a networking perspective. To address this problem, three main contributions are made: (i) BeiDou progressive replacement is formulated as a network-aware launch sequence planning problem over evolving laser--microwave hybrid constellation states; (ii) an integer linear programming (ILP) model is developed to evaluate the networking gain of each candidate launch action under practical engineering constraints; and (iii) a priority-aware search heuristic is introduced to reduce the action evaluation space for efficient round-wise decision making. Simulations based on the actual BDS-3 constellation demonstrate that the proposed replacement sequence achieves a more favorable hybrid-network evolution than the historical BDS-3 launch order, including earlier formation of a ground-accessible laser-enhanced network structure, better utilization of laser-link resources, fewer residual non-anchor satellites, and lower microwave-layer waiting delay. The proposed framework can serve as a network-aware decision-support tool for future BeiDou evolution, and the resulting replacement sequence can provide direct engineering guidance for BeiDou replacement planning.