Deadline-Bound Finite-Object Delivery over Intermittent LEO Satellite Contact Plans under Residual-Service Accounting

Abstract

Low-Earth-orbit (LEO) relay networks deliver finite objects -- sensing tiles, telemetry blocks, model updates, and checkpoints -- over intermittent inter-satellite and space-to-ground contact plans. Partial delivery is insufficient when the complete object misses its deadline. When an object is split across candidate paths, a path-private evaluation can count the same contact service more than once and silently under-count completion. We develop a residual-service-aware delivery layer that consumes candidate paths from contact-plan route generation and tests whether the complete object can be delivered before its deadline under per-edge first-in-first-out residual service. Under controlled shared-contact contention, path-private evaluation under-counts completion by up to 154 s and can report finite completion for a fixed plan with no residual-service completion. For edge-disjoint complementary contacts, the layer reduces to fixed-path service; we derive a sufficient service-budget condition under which two-way striping strictly enlarges the feasible payload region. We verify a restricted exhaustive reference, characterize runtime over a 20-180-satellite procedural contact model, and show that bounded two-way striping reduces mean and median gaps to the restricted reference by about 40%, while P90 and worst-case gaps remain unchanged.