Book Description

Satellite range scheduling is a complex problem that involves scheduling satellite supports in which a satellite and a specific remote tracking station are assigned a time window during which they communicate with each other. As the number and complexity of satellite supports continue to increase, more pressure is placed on the current manual system to efficiently generate a schedule. The objective of this research was to develop a methodology that will automate the generation of the initial 24 hour schedule. The goal of the algorithm developed was to schedule as many conflict free supports as possible. A two phased approach was developed to schedule the supports. The first phase scheduled as many low altitude satellite supports as possible, while the second phase scheduled as many additional high altitude satellite supports as possible. For both phases, schedule generation and schedule improvement algorithms were developed. The schedule generation algorithms are a mixed integer program linking procedure and an insertion procedure. The schedule improvement algorithms are a two satellite interchange procedure and a three satellite interchange procedure. A schedule was generated for six representative data sets with encouraging results. At least 91% of all satellite support requests were scheduled for each day. These results were comparable to results of the current range schedulers and a previous automation study. Based on the results reported, the methodology presented in this research effort seems to be a valid approach for automating the initial 24 hour schedule ... Scheduling, Mixed integer programming, Insertion procedure, Interchange procedure.