{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,1]],"date-time":"2026-06-01T12:49:16Z","timestamp":1780318156475,"version":"3.54.1"},"reference-count":27,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"5","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,3,5]],"date-time":"2021-03-05T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1614902400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100010198","name":"Ministerio de Econom\u00eda, Industria y Competitividad, Gobierno de Espa\u00f1a","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["MDM-2016-0600"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["MDM-2016-0600"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100010198","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100004837","name":"Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovaci\u00f3n","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["RTI2018-099008-B-C21\/AEI\/10.13039\/501100011033"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["RTI2018-099008-B-C21\/AEI\/10.13039\/501100011033"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100004837","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100004837","name":"Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovaci\u00f3n","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["PID2019-106808RA-I00\/AEI\/FEDER\/UE"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["PID2019-106808RA-I00\/AEI\/FEDER\/UE"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100004837","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Secretaria d'Universitats i Recerca del Departament d\u2019Empresa i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya","award":["2017 SGR 376"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2017 SGR 376"]}]},{"name":"Secretaria d'Universitats i Recerca del Departament d\u2019Empresa i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya","award":["2017 SGR 219"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2017 SGR 219"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Remote Sensing"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Presently, the Earth Observation community is demanding applications that provide low latency and high downlink capabilities. An increase in downlink contacts becomes essential to meet these new requirements. The Federated Satellite Systems concept addresses this demand by promoting satellite collaborations to share unused downlink opportunities. These collaborations are established opportunistically and temporarily, posing multiple technology challenges to be implemented in-orbit. This work contributes to the definition of the Federation Deployment Control Protocol which formalizes a mechanism to fairly establish and manage these collaborations by employing a negotiation process between the satellites. Moreover, this manuscript presents the results of a validation campaign of this protocol with three stratospheric balloons. In summary, more than 27 federations with 63.0% of throughput were established during the field campaign. Some of these federations were used to download data to the ground, and others were established to balance data storage between balloons. These federations allowed also the extension of the coverage of a ground station with a federation that relayed data through a balloon, and the achievement of a hybrid scenario with one balloon forwarding data from a ground device. The results demonstrate that the proposed protocol is functional and ready to be embedded in a CubeSat mission.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/rs13050982","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,3,5]],"date-time":"2021-03-05T05:03:15Z","timestamp":1614920595000},"page":"982","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":18,"title":["Towards Federated Satellite Systems and Internet of Satellites: The Federation Deployment Control Protocol"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"13","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5892-3404","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Joan A.","family":"Ruiz-de-Azua","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Network Engineering, Universitat Polit\u00e8cnica de Catalunya\u2014UPC BarcelonaTech, 08034 Barcelona, Spain"},{"name":"Department of Signal Theory and Communications, Universitat Polit\u00e8cnica de Catalunya\u2014UPC BarcelonaTech, 08034 Barcelona, Spain"},{"name":"Research Group in Space Science and Technologies (CTE-UPC), Institut d\u2019Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC), 08034 Barcelona, Spain"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3289-8682","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Nicola","family":"Garzaniti","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), 143026 Skolkovo, Russia"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5993-2994","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Alessandro","family":"Golkar","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), 143026 Skolkovo, Russia"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6371-8595","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Anna","family":"Calveras","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Network Engineering, Universitat Polit\u00e8cnica de Catalunya\u2014UPC BarcelonaTech, 08034 Barcelona, Spain"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9514-4992","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Adriano","family":"Camps","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Signal Theory and Communications, Universitat Polit\u00e8cnica de Catalunya\u2014UPC BarcelonaTech, 08034 Barcelona, Spain"},{"name":"Research Group in Space Science and Technologies (CTE-UPC), Institut d\u2019Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC), 08034 Barcelona, Spain"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,3,5]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"34777","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2018.2844257","article-title":"Design and Optimization of a Polar Satellite Mission to Complement the Copernicus System","volume":"6","author":"Sanchez","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Awange, J., and Kiema, J. 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