Optimisation problems and resolution methods in satellite scheduling and space-craft operation: a survey

ABSTRACT

The fast development in the production of small, low-cost satellites is propelling an important increase in satellite mission planning and operations projects. Central to satellite mission planning is the resolution of scheduling problem for an optimised allocation of user requests for efficient communication between operations teams at the ground and spacecraft systems. The aim of this paper is to survey the state of the art in the satellite scheduling problem, analyse its mathematical formulations, examine its multi-objective nature and resolution through meta-heuristics methods. Finally, we consider some optimisation problems arising in spacecraft design, operation and satellite deployment systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Satellite scheduling
• space-craft operation
• optimisation
• meta-heuristics
• simulation
• benchmarking

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We set $\lambda =1.5$ for the experimental study reported in the references.

2. Satellite Tool Kit: http://www.agi.com/products/by-product-type/applications/stk/.

3. Benchmark of instances can be accessed at: http://www.cs.upc.edu/~fatos/GSSchedulingInputs.zip

Additional information

Funding

The work in the paper was partially supported by a grant from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (H-ZG3K).