SatDL: Jointly Optimizing Data Redistribution and Training for Satellite-Based Distributed Learning

Satellite-based distributed learning promises to train machine-learning models directly in orbit using massive, globally dispersed sensor data, thereby avoiding large-scale data downloads to ground servers. However, training convergence is significantly slowed by severe non-IID data, specifically label imbalance, as each satellite observes different geographic regions with distinct labels. This imbalance extends training duration and increases energy consumption for solar-powered satellites. Existing approaches either fully redistribute data to enforce IID conditions - accelerating convergence but incurring substantial communication delays - or avoid redistribution entirely by modifying local learning algorithms to mitigate the impact of label imbalance, which, however, still prolong training and increase energy use. Both extremes result in excessive total end-to-end learning time (data-transfer delay plus training time) and thus elevated onboard energy consumption. We present SatDL, a data-redistribution framework designed to minimize total end-to-end learning time. At its core, SatDL develops a Distributor-Critic framework that jointly models and optimizes data-transfer delay and training time. Evaluations through trace-driven simulations of a 1,584-satellite Starlink constellation and hardware emulations using NVIDIA Jetson and A100 GPUs across five datasets show SatDL reduces total end-to-end learning time by up to 18.6% and onboard energy consumption by 12.23-88.00%, while maintaining inference accuracy within a few percentage points of state-of-the-art baselines.