A Systematic Review of Satellite Communication Security: Challenges, Motivation, and Future Directions

Critical satellite communication (SATCOM) systems enable Earth observation, emergency response, navigation, and broadband backhauls. The satellite broadcast transmission model, onboard computational limitations, and 10+ year satellite service life erect specific structural impediments to the security of SATCOM, none of which have been sufficiently addressed in prior research. PRISMA 2020-compliant systematic literature review, consisting of a comprehensive search of 70 articles (2019-2025) via IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, and Scopus. Data extracted from the reviews were clustered by category and synthesized under six specific security domains: Physical Layer Security (PLS) (33%), CCSDS Space Data Link Security (SDLS) (15%), network protection using Sat-IPsec (18%), federated learning-based Network Intrusion Detection Systems (FL-NIDS) (17%), blockchain-based trust mechanisms (10%), and post-quantum and quantum cryptography algorithms (PQC/QKD) (7%). All security domains show promising levels of analytical sophistication, although none were validated through on-orbit or hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing, and all 70 reviewed articles were based exclusively on analytical modeling or simulation. Unlike prior surveys, this review presents a cross-layer security taxonomy mapping domains to the SATCOM protocol stack, an orbital evidence matrix describing LEO, MEO, and GEO orbits across the security domains along with Technology Readiness Level (TRL) assessments, a quantitative analysis domain-coverage diagram, and three critical research areas requiring attention: SATCOM-specific IDS datasets, on-orbit testing, and practical integration of NIST PQC standards FIPS 203 and FIPS 204 to flight-grade software and nearly non-existent security research concerning MEO systems.