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's 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's 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's robustness under traffic demand perturbations.

翻译：摘要：低地球轨道（LEO）巨型星座正成为下一代互联网的高容量骨干网络。激光终端部署实现了高带宽、低延迟的星间链路（ISL）；然而，其数量有限、捕获缓慢及不稳定性使得构建稳定的卫星拓扑变得困难。现有模式（如+Grid和Motif）忽略了区域流量、地面站部署及星座几何特征。鉴于地球人口稀疏分布及农村地区的孤立性，流量模式本质上具有非均匀性，这为根据流量模式定向星间链路提供了契机。本文提出Starfield——一种基于数学分析的新型需求感知卫星拓扑设计启发式算法。首先根据流量流在星座球壳上构建矢量场，并在球壳流形上定义对应的黎曼度量。该度量结合空间几何被用于为每条潜在ISL分配距离值，随后对所有需求流量进行聚合，为每颗卫星的链路选择生成启发式指标。受+Grid启发，每颗卫星选择具有最小黎曼启发式值的链路及其对应角链路。为评估Starfield，我们开发了自定义的链路感知且链路可配置的包级仿真器，并与+Grid及Random拓扑进行对比。针对第一阶段星链系统，仿真结果表明在多种流量分布下，跳数减少高达30%，拉伸因子提升15%。此外，静态Starfield（Starfield的轨道间链路匹配变体）在真实流量模式下相较+Grid实现了20%的拉伸因子提升。实验进一步证明了Starfield在需求扰动下的鲁棒性。