Beam-Layout for a Telecommunication Satellite: Comparison of a Matheuristic Approach and a Merge-and-Split Heuristic
摘要
To enhance the quantity and quality of services provided by operators, telecommunication satellites are becoming more and more complex. To achieve the desired performance required, manufacturers must solve highly combinatorial problems during the design phases. One of these problems is the design of a high-quality payload for a geostationary satellite that must provide television services to distinct regions, each one coming with specific channel requirements. Such a problem combines the challenges of broadcasting missions, where the same content must be transmitted to large regions, and broadband missions, where multiple beams must coexist within the coverage area. In this paper, we propose two methods to determine a set of non-conflicting beams covering all the regions while optimizing a performance metric related to the sizes of the beams used. The first method is a matheuristic approach that iteratively solves an Integer Linear Programming model. The second method, called the merge-and-split heuristic, is inspired by Iterated Local Search and exploits a fast graph coloring algorithm to analyze conflicts among selected beams. These methods are evaluated on realistic instances, the largest ones involving over one hundred regions to cover.