Bounding the optimum for the problem of scheduling the photographs of an Agile Earth Observing Satellite

摘要

The problem of managing an Agile Earth Observing Satellite consists of selecting and scheduling a subset of photographs among a set of candidate ones that satisfy imperative constraints and maximize a gain function. We propose a tabu search algorithm to solve this NP-hard problem. This one is formulated as a constrained optimization problem and involves stereoscopic and time window visibility constraints; and a convex evaluation function that increases its hardness. To obtain a wide-ranging and an efficient exploration of the search space, we sample it by consistent and saturated configurations. Our algorithm is also hybridized with a systematic search that uses partial enumerations. To increase the solution quality, we introduce and solve a secondary problem; the minimization of the sum of the transition durations between the acquisitions. Upper bounds are also calculated by a dynamic programming algorithm on a relaxed problem. The obtained results show the efficiency of our approach.