A Heuristic Genetic Algorithm for Regional Targets’ Small Satellite Image Downlink Scheduling Problem

Abstract

Small satellite image downlink scheduling problem (SSIDSP) is an important part of satellite mission planning. SSIDSP mainly needs to balance how to better match the limited receiving capacity of the ground station with the limited satellite resources. In this paper, regional targets are considered with SSIDSP. We propose a mathematical model that maximizes profit by considering time value and regional targets. A downlink schedule algorithm (DSA) is proposed to complete the task sequence arrangement and generate scheduling results. A heuristic genetic algorithm (HGA) is used to optimize the generated task sequence to achieve higher profit. Three scale test instances are used to test the effectiveness of HGA and DSA. We compare the effect of HGA, basic genetic algorithm (GA), and construction heuristic algorithm. The experimental results proved that the proposed approach ensures the successful completion of observation tasks and is effective for SSIDSP.