Chapter 6 - An overview of optimization and resolution methods in satellite scheduling and spacecraft operation: description, modeling, and application

Abstract

With the popularization of satellite technology and the normal development of satellite use, the number of mission planning and operation of satellites has increased significantly, including large and intelligent satellites, as well as small and low-cost satellites. With the large-scale use of satellites, people’s demand for scheduling systems has become more urgent. The intelligent scheduling system can automatically and optimally process the satellite task planning, and assign the task to the space task through the ground station service. Satellite communication task scheduling is an essential part of the satellite communication system. This book chapter aims to summarize the research status of the satellite scheduling problem, analyze its important variants, mathematical formulas, problem models, and coping strategies, modeling it as a time window scheduling problem, and investigate its multiobjective. The time window problem is highly computationally complex and highly restricted, and different task requirements may lead to conflicts between the accessibility and visibility of windows, resulting in goal conflicts. Here, we consider the difficulty of its optimality, heuristic, and meta-heuristic methods (local search and population-based) to solve the problem. To verify and evaluate the performance of the analytical model, we cite the simulation tool satellite tool kit to provide some testing and experiments. Moreover, in recent years, various scholars have studied satellite scheduling and spacecraft-related issues such as Internet Satellites and put forward many models and research strategies. We summarize these models and strategies and obtain different applications with optimization formulations which can be used in spacecraft operation, design, and satellite deployment systems.