AAS 98-128

SATELLITE CONSTELLATION DESIGN FOR ZONAL COVERAGE USING GENETIC ALGORITHMS

T. A. Ely, W. A. Crossley, E. A. Williams - Purdue University

Abstract

Traditional satellite constellation design strategies typically address the problem of global coverage, however for many applications this is not necessary; coverage over a zonal region between specified latitudes is sufficient. This is often the case with satellite communication systems that focus coverage over the most populous regions of the Earth's Northern Hemisphere. To make the design problem analytically tractable, previous methodologies have imposed circular orbits as a constraint. The present study does not apply this constraint, it includes elliptical orbits in the design space for finding 'efficient' (minimal number of satellites and altitude guaranteeing complete coverage over a zonal region) satellite constellations. However, including elliptical orbits greatly complicates the design problem, yielding one that is not analytically tractable. Design selection must utilize a numerical search technique, a multiobjective design strategy using genetic algorithms appears to be well suited for this problem. The algorithm is capable of arriving at efficient designs that have varied, often competing, design goals in a complex design space (such as with the present problem).

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