Automating Air Force Satellite Control Network (AFSCN) scheduling

Satellite systems play a vital role in our national defense. Military satellites generally require frequent contact with remote tracking stations for the transmission and receipt of information required for mission accomplishment and continued satellite operations. Satellite Range Scheduling (SRS) is a complex problem which involves assigning requested satellite supports to time windows at remote tracking stations. This process is currently a manual process, assisted by computer graphics and error checking. This paper presents an automated scheduling tool we have developed using mixed integer programming, and insertion and interchange heuristics. Our testing shows that this approach can be used to generate schedules comparable to current schedules considerably quicker than the current method.