# Learning Satellite Pattern-of-Life Identification: A Diffusion-based Approach

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.10814 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10814/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 24 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Dec 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [Diffusion Models: A Comprehensive Survey of Methods and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.00796/) (2022)
- [TS2Vec: Towards Universal Representation of Time Series](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10466/) (2021)
- [DiffuSeq: Sequence to Sequence Text Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08933/) (2022)
- [MS-TCN: Multi-Stage Temporal Convolutional Network for Action Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.01945/) (2019)
- [ASFormer: Transformer for Action Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.08568/) (2021)
- [Self-Supervised Learning for Time Series Analysis: Taxonomy, Progress, and Prospects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.10125/) (2023)
- [U-Time: A Fully Convolutional Network for Time Series Segmentation Applied to Sleep Staging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.11162/) (2019)
- [Temporal Action Segmentation: An Analysis of Modern Techniques](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.10352/) (2022)
- [DiffSTG: Probabilistic Spatio-Temporal Graph Forecasting with Denoising Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.13629/) (2023)
- [Text Generation with Diffusion Language Models: A Pre-training Approach with Continuous Paragraph Denoise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.11685/) (2022)
- [Diffusion Action Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17959/) (2023)
- [DiffTraj: Generating GPS Trajectory with Diffusion Probabilistic Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.11582/) (2023)
- [Time Series Change Point Detection with Self-Supervised Contrastive Predictive Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.14097/) (2020)
- [Unsupervised Action Segmentation by Joint Representation Learning and Online Clustering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.13353/) (2021)
- [ControlTraj: Controllable Trajectory Generation with Topology-Constrained Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15380/) (2024)
- [Temporally Consistent Unbalanced Optimal Transport for Unsupervised Action Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01518/) (2024)
- [Large Pre-trained time series models for cross-domain Time series analysis tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11413/) (2023)
- [ClaSP -- Parameter-free Time Series Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.13987/) (2022)
- [Timestamp-supervised Wearable-based Activity Segmentation and Recognition with Contrastive Learning and Order-Preserving Optimal Transport](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.09114/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

As Earth's orbital satellite population grows exponentially, effective space situational awareness becomes critical for collision prevention and sustainable operations. Current approaches to monitor satellite behaviors rely on expert knowledge and rule-based systems that scale poorly. Among essential monitoring tasks, satellite pattern-of-life (PoL) identification, analyzing behaviors like station-keeping maneuvers and drift operations, remains underdeveloped due to aerospace system complexity, operational variability, and inconsistent ephemerides sources. We propose a novel generative approach for satellite PoL identification that significantly eliminates the dependence on expert knowledge. The proposed approach leverages orbital elements and positional data to enable automatic pattern discovery directly from observations. Our implementation uses a diffusion model framework for end-to-end identification without manual refinement or domain expertise. The architecture combines a multivariate time-series encoder to capture hidden representations of satellite positional data with a conditional denoising process to generate accurate PoL classifications. Through experiments across diverse real-world satellite operational scenarios, our approach demonstrates superior identification quality and robustness across varying data quality characteristics. A case study using actual satellite data confirms the approach's transformative potential for operational behavior pattern identification, enhanced tracking, and space situational awareness.