A Heuristic for an Earth Observing Satellite Constellation Scheduling Problem with Download Considerations

This paper presents a priority-based conflict-avoided heuristic for the earth observing satellite constellation scheduling problem considering image downloads. A mathematical formulation for this oversubscribed vehicle routing and scheduling problem with time windows is defined. A priority-based conflict-avoided heuristic is provided, and the download scheduling mechanism is also studied. Finally the lower bound provided by the heuristic is compared with a lower bound obtained by a FIFO heuristic and an upper bound provided by ILOG CP.