Innovation design for complex products is a difficult issue in the military manufacturing industry. Ontology may provide a feasible way to rebuild the design process for complex products via sharing and reusing of design knowledge. In this paper, a design method used in the innovation design process of the complex products with knowledge modeling is proposed. Knowledge modeling is realized through ontology construction by combining the cycling evolutional theory of constructing ontology and OWL (Ontology Web Language)-based knowledge representation. As a case study, the satellite is selected as one of the complex products. The application domain of the satellite ontology is analyzed. According to the analysis result, the knowledge structure of satellite ontology is put forward based on OWL. The application of satellite product design shows that the method can effectively organize and reuse the knowledge resources in the innovation design of complex product and help companies to create more competitive products based on the existing knowledge and experience.