Reactive Satellite Range Scheduling

In practical scenarios of Satellite Range Scheduling, an alternative approach to that of the previous chapter in dealing with dynamic or uncertain parameters is developed. Rather than assuming that parameter change statistics are known a priori (as in the robust scheduling problem), in the dynamic problem it is assumed there is no a priori knowledge of parameter changes, and reactive approaches are considered, where the schedule needs to be recomputed every time these parameters change. The authors present an algorithm which introduces a preprocessing stage performed while the parameters remain unchanged, which allows to minimize the time of recomputation of the optimal schedule for the case where only one pass changes at a time. The authors also provide a generalization of this algorithm for reducing the recomputation time in more complex cases. (This research was performed while the author held a National Research Council Research Associateship Award at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).)