Virtualizing nanosatellites in SDN/NFV enabled ground segments to enhance service orchestration

A new class of miniaturized satellites, named CubeSats, have recently drawn the attention of the academic community first, and later of industry too, because they appear as a high attractive solution to provide a true widespread connectivity that allows also objects in remote areas to be part of the global Internet of Things (IoT). In this paper, we study the integration of this kind of satellites into multi-tenant scenarios, wherein multiple CubeSats constellations may be able to offer services even in an integrated manner. In particular, an IoT platform running within SDN/NFV-ready infrastructures which also includes CubeSat segments is designed. In the proposed architecture, CubeSats are considered as IoT sensing and actuation devices in the sky always available and able to provide enhanced services through their virtual counterpart (i.e., the virtual object). Useful scenarios are described and studied in which different constellations of CubeSats can be orchestrated via the proposed virtualisation platform to cooperate in providing IoT services.