Scheduling of a Constellation of Satellites: Creating a Mixed-Integer Linear Model
Résumé
The purpose of this paper is to provide a new scheduling model of a large constellation of imaging satellites that does not use a heuristic solving method. The objective is to create a mixed-integer linear model that would be competitive in speed and in its closeness to reality against a current model using simulated annealing, while trying to improve both models. Each satellite has the choice between a number of possible events, each event having a utility and a cost, and the chosen schedule must take into account numerous time-related constraints. The main difficulties appeared in modeling realistically a battery level and in handling infeasible configurations due to inaccurate parameters. The obtained linear model has enabled a better understanding of the performance of the simulated annealing solver, and could also be adapted to different real-world scheduling problems.