# Toward Integrated Satellite Operations and Network Management: A Review and Novel Framework
## 3 Integrated Management Framework

Table 5: CMS challenges. considering the operational demands of both sporadic and persistent networks. In sporadic connectivity scenarios, task scheduling facilitates the management of operations during link discontinuities, ensuring continuous mission progress. On the other hand, in high connectivity environments, it allows for the prediction and scheduling of operations in a centralized and batched manner. This minimizes the need for constant control signaling, preventing system flooding while enabling the coordination of complex tasks such as pointing and tracking. Additionally, it accommodates the integration of external service providers, such as GSN and external relay constellations, which require prior scheduling and booking [88]. Furthermore, autonomous satellites can leverage a predicted schedule for onboard decision making in distributed systems. The CMS is a task-scheduling framework that enables operations management automation, integrating satellite operation methodologies with those of network management. This framework, along with its surrounding architecture, facilitates efficient satellite network management, bridging the gap between these two domains. It generates and distributes optimized schedules and coordinates constellation operations among multiple SNOs and MNOs to seamlessly integrate a satellite-based NTN with terrestrial networks, while ensuring fair resource allocation and operational efficiency across all stakeholders. The representation of the CMS with all its submodules and interactions is presented in Figure 1. The blue boxes represent the logical modules of the framework, while the dotted boxes illustrate a simplified overview of the input and output information for each module. The Simulator is the module in charge of propagating the constellation state. It computes future contact opportunities to provide them to the scheduler for task allocation. This module also contains resource models to propagate the general state of the satellites accurately, not only their orbit. As such, the operator can define the scenario resources and elements (satellites, service areas, GS, etc.) in the dedicated database, and the simulator will propagate the element's states and compute the contact topology of the schedule. The Task Manager is the module that generates the initial tasks to be assigned by the scheduler. To generate the tasks, this module contains information regarding the expected traffic model of the provided service. This, combined with the scenario contact topology provided by the plan executor, allows the module to generate an initial unassigned task list, a required input for the scheduler. As such, the operator can define the scenario traffic model in the dedicated database. The Plan Executor is the coordinating module that enables an autonomous and dynamic execution of the CMS. The module is responsible of triggering and configuring reschedules based on the system feedback. It is also responsible for the timely delivery of the produced plans to their corresponding agents (GSN operators, SNO, etc.). The plan executor has a dedicated database to store and maintain past schedules, predicted system  
Figure 1: CMS modules and interconnections. resources, and system telemetry metrics. The operator can configure the plan executor to set the rescheduling criteria and scheduling configuration, such as the planning period. This module is further explained in Section 3.1 and is presented in detail in [89]. The Scheduler is a scheduling engine with an optimization algorithm, which generates an optimal global schedule based on the implemented constraints and objective functions. These include system and business constraints and metrics from satellite operations, network management, and QoS assurance. The scheduler takes as input an unassigned schedule or problem (as depicted in the Figure 1), and produces an optimized schedule as output.