Integrated agile observation satellite scheduling problem considering different memory environments: a case study

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental study on an integrated agile earth observation satellite (AEOS) scheduling problem involving the satellite memory environments of the partially erasable memory (PEM) and the holistically erasable memory (HEM). The integrated AEOS scheduling problem simultaneously considers the satellite observation and transmission events, in which the onboard memory functions as a very important connective resource. To address the memory constraints in the AEOS scheduling problem, an integrated AEOS scheduling model that is suitable for both the PEM and HEM environments is proposed in this paper. Based on commonly used construction heuristic and meta-heuristics, two hybrid approaches, Tabu-simulated annealing (TSA) and Tabu late acceptance (TLA) algorithms, are adopted to solve this problem. The highlights in this paper are the formulation of novel adaptive memory constraints for the AEOS scheduling and the quantitatively scheduling comparison of separated and integrated modeling methods. Experimental results indicate that (1) the memory environment has a direct influence on the AEOS integrated scheduling results, where the PEM environment sufficiently utilizes memory resources and advances the efficiency of the AEOS a lot. (2) The integrated scheduling method enables the reduction in resource consumption and obtains a better result than the separated scheduling method, especially in the HEM environment, (3) and the hybrid meta-heuristics TLA and TSA that show better overall performance are suggested for addressing the studied AEOS integrated scheduling problem.