핵심 개념
The key objective is to devise optimal sequences of orbital maneuvers for satellites in a constellation system to maximize the total observation rewards obtained by covering a set of targets of interest over multiple reconfiguration stages.
초록
The paper addresses the problem of reconfiguring Earth observation satellite constellation systems through multiple stages. The Multi-stage Constellation Reconfiguration Problem (MCRP) aims to maximize the total observation rewards obtained by covering a set of targets of interest through the active manipulation of the orbits and relative phasing of constituent satellites.
The authors propose a novel integer linear programming (ILP) formulation for MCRP, capable of obtaining provably optimal solutions. To overcome computational intractability due to the combinatorial explosion in solving large-scale instances, they introduce two computationally efficient sequential decision-making methods based on the principles of a myopic policy and a rolling horizon procedure.
The key highlights and insights are:
- MCRP extends prior work on single-stage reconfiguration by allowing multiple reconfiguration opportunities, providing increased flexibility and responsiveness.
- The ILP formulation models the sequence of orbital maneuvers using a time-expanded graph and considers various physical and operational constraints.
- The myopic policy and rolling horizon policy are proposed as computationally efficient sequential decision-making methods to address large-scale MCRP instances.
- Computational experiments demonstrate that the devised sequential decision-making approaches yield high-quality solutions with improved computational efficiency over the baseline MCRP.
- A case study using Hurricane Harvey data showcases the advantages of multi-stage constellation reconfiguration over single-stage and no-reconfiguration scenarios.
통계
The mission planning horizon comprises 𝑇 discrete time steps.
The constellation has 𝐾 satellites and 𝑃 target points of interest.
The reconfiguration process consists of 𝑁 stages.
Each satellite 𝑘 has a maximum resource (e.g., propellant) budget of 𝑐𝑘
max.
The minimum number of satellites required to cover target point 𝑝 at time 𝑡 is 𝑟𝑡𝑝.
The observation reward for target point 𝑝 at time 𝑡 is 𝜋𝑡𝑝.
인용구
"The objective of MCRP is to determine the optimal sequence of orbital maneuvers for satellites, aimed at maximizing the observation rewards obtained by covering targets of interest."
"The MCRP framework is versatile enough to be applied to scheduling either a short segment of the entire mission horizon or the entire mission horizon itself, depending on the users' requirements."
"Multiple, short-segmented MCRPs can be consecutively applied, and their solutions can be concatenated to generate a solution for a longer planning horizon. However, this approach does not ensure optimality across the entire mission."