No general rules exist for constellation design; instead, constellation designers have to consider various cost drivers in a trade-off way. This paper presents a systematic method for the design of continuous global coverage Walker and Street-of-Coverage constellations, by taking seven critical constellation properties (coverage, robustness, self-induced collision avoidance, launch, build-up, station-keeping, and end-of-life disposal) as design criteria. In this method, a set of characteristic parameters, which can determine the constellation configuration, are first identified based on the review of Walker and Street-of-Coverage constellations. Then a series of indexes are proposed and modelled as functions of the characteristic parameters, to quantitatively assess the constellation properties. Through the quantitative assessment, the influence of constellation configuration on constellation properties are revealed, and the trade-offs between constellation properties are analysed. Finally, taking the characteristic parameters and constellation properties as the design variables and objectives, a multi-objective optimisation problem is formulated to find the globally optimal constellations for given missions.

星座设计没有通用规则；相反，星座设计者必须以权衡的方式考虑各种成本驱动因素。本文提出了一种设计连续全球覆盖的 Walker 和 Street-of-Coverage 星座的系统方法，通过采用七个关键星座属性（覆盖、鲁棒性、自诱导碰撞避免、发射、建立、站保持和报废处置）作为设计标准。在该方法中，首先基于对 Walker 和 Street-of-Coverage 星座的回顾来确定一组可以确定星座配置的特征参数。然后提出一系列指标并将其建模为特征参数的函数，以定量评估星座特性。通过量化评估，揭示了星座配置对星座属性的影响，并分析了星座属性之间的权衡。最后，以特征参数和星座属性为设计变量和目标，制定多目标优化问题，为给定任务寻找全局最优星座。