A New Strategy of Visibility Conflict Optimization Between Multiple Ground Stations and Satellites

Abstract

The effective scheduling of satellite tasks depends upon the visibility of the ground antennae and satellites. Moreover, a ground station antenna should interact with a satellite's visibility to achieve a successful communication link. Furthermore, the satellite generates a cone-shaped visibility as it passes above the ground station antenna. Therefore, whenever multiple satellites fly over a ground station, they can cause a visibility conflict. In addition, managing visibility conflicts has become more complex with an increasing number of satellites. Therefore, we propose a new strategy for visibility overlap optimization between multiple satellites and ground station antennae using binary integer programming that utilizes a branch-and-bound method. The scheduling optimization model independently considers the ground station antennae and visibilities of the satellites as resources and tasks, respectively. The main objective is to maximize profit by allocating satellite visibility to the antenna's overall support period as much as possible. Because the branch-and-bound method in binary integer programming provides a near-exact optimal solution, it can be applied to a complex scheduling problem. Finally, the proposed method was compared with the suboptimal genetic algorithm of previous studies for performance evaluation. As a result, the proposed model provides a better objective value when more satellites are allocated. In addition, it more efficiently utilizes resources by decreasing the remaining total support period.